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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 768313, member: 289"] I think we will be mediocre most of the time and good sometimes in this conference. Yes we have more revenue. it's equal to the revenue the other teams in our conference will have and they've been in the conference for a while. We will be able to recruit better in the south but the best recruits in Florida will still go to Miami and Florida State, the best Georgia recruits to Georgia and Georgia Tech, the best South Carolina recruits to South Carolina and Clemson, etc. etc. Florida State is 'back'. Miami may be back. Clemson has their best team since the 1981 national title team and Virginia Tech is still strong. We are going to have enormous trouble competing with those programs on a regular basis, although we will beat them occasionally. When i did my study of the records and rankings of these 14 teams in the Dome Era, (1980-2012), I came up with the following average national rankings, (using a source that ranked all major college teams): Florida State 14.03 Miami 19.67 Virginia Tech 26.33 Clemson 29.09 Boston College 44.55 Georgia Tech 47.33 North Carolina 47.79 Pittsburgh 48.33 Syracuse 48.48 Virginia 50.21 North Carolina State 50.76 Louisville 57.88 Wake Forest 69.61 Duke 81.21 There was never a single year when we had the best team in this league, even 1987 when both Miami and Florida State were better. I saw four tiers: Florida State and Miami were at the top. Clemson and Virginia Tech were next. Then came 8 teams that had mixed histories. One of them might move up into the second tier: Louisville, which has a great athletic department and is surrounded by great recruiting areas. I think the other seven will be up and won: I call them the elevator teams. Their achievement will be to be good sometimes, hopefully in years when the top teams are not at their peak and to avoid being bad. The foruth tier would be Duke and Wake Forest. The Deacons have had some success but I doubt they can sustain it. We were in a great position in the NBE, being in a relatively weak conference that still had a BCS automatic qualification. If we could have regained the level we had from 1987-2001, we might have had a dream year when we ran the table and did so in a year when no more than one other BCS team did it. Then we would have a shot at another national title. Virginia Tech had a shot in 1999. West Virginia would have had a shot in 2007 if they could have beaten a mediocre Pitt team in their own place. Cincinnati would have played for it in 2009 if Texas hadn't gotten a second chance at a game winning field goal vs. Nebraska in the Big 12 title game. I don't see that happening now. We aren't running the table in this conference. But we can have winning seasons, go to bowl games. But I don't see us winning this conference or winding up in even a four team playoff. We can dream but I'll be shocked if they come true. [/QUOTE]

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