Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1203870, member: 289"] Florida State keeps winning but isn't impressing anyone with the manner in which they do it expect they seem to have a knack for pulling games out of the fire. It's a far cry from last season, when they were blowing everybody's doors off. Syracuse was winning, sometimes, last year and we scrapped enough wins to get to a bowl game and win it, although considering the nature of our losses, it seemed like a false postive. This year we've had a lot of injuries and we're getting pounded into the floor like a nail with 8 losses in our last nine games. But it's more than the injuries. And maybe it's more than coaching incompetence. I wonder if this conference is just tougher than it was last year. Tougher for us and tougher for Florida State. That makes it hard for them blow teams away and makes it less forgiving for a dysfunctional team like Syracuse. I decided to look at last year's ACC games against Power Five level teams and compare it to this year's. The first problem is that there's so few of them. The schools have gotten smart, (if timid) and copied the SEC by playing a lot of mid-majors and small college teams. The second is that a lot of them are against Notre Dame, an ex-officio member of the ACC. A third is that one of the 2014 games is our game against Maryland, who was an ACC member last year and is a Big Ten member this year. A fourth is that Lousiville was not in the conference last year. But let's look at the tea leaves anyway to see if they have a story to tell. 2013 Florida State beat Florida 37-7 and Auburn 34-31 Clemson beat Georgia 38-35, lost to South Carolina 17-31 Maryland beat West Virginia 37-0 Boston College lost to USC 7-35 and Arizona 19-42 Syracuse lost to Penn State 17-23 and Northwestern 27-48, beat Minnesota 21-17 Wake Forest lost to Vanderbilt 21-23 Georgia Tech lost to BYU 20-38, Georgia 34-41 and Mississippi 17-25 North Carolina lost to South Carolina 10-27 Duke lost to Texas A&M 48-52 Virginia beat BYU 19-16, lost to Oregon 10-59 Miami beat Florida 21-16, lost to Louisville 9-36 Virginia Tech lost to Alabama 10-35 and UCLA 12-42 Total: 7 wins 15 losses 2014 Florida State beat Oklahoma State 37-31 and Miami 31-27 (upcoming: Florida) Clemson lost to Georgia 21-45 (upcoming: South Carolina) Louisville beat Notre Dame 31-28 (upcoming: Kentucky) Boston College beat USC 37-31 Syracuse lost to Maryland 20-34 and Notre Dame 15-31 Georgia Tech (upcoming: Georgia) North Carolina lost to Notre Dame 43-50 Duke beat Kansas 41-3 Virginia lost to UCLA 20-28 and BYU 33-41 Pittsburgh lost to Iowa 20-24 Miami lost to Nebraska 31-41 Virginia Tech beat Ohio State 35-21 Also upcoming: The bowl games Total so far: 6 wins, 8 losses I'm not sure how conclusive that is but I do think that the middle of the conference is significantly stronger than it was last year, which makes it less intimidated by Florida State and less forgiving for us. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?