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Message: [QUOTE="Lou_C, post: 687376, member: 3201"] More or less, yep, that would do it. Miami and Florida State, and I would about put Clemson there based on the way they can recruit, one or two of those three should be in the playoff hunt most years. And in years when they aren't, that's when someone out of that second pack has to be up in the top 10 challenging. Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Louisville and Virginia all probably have the tools to hit the top ten regularly. It's not just winning national titles. Go back for decades and the number of ACC schools (when they are in the ACC) finishing in the top ten is disturbingly low. It's not just a bad cycle, it's not just FSU being down, it's not just the BCS era. I think people really don't realize that it's been systemic going back in the 1970s. Some good background there from Resonator. There is no historical "up" cycle for the ACC compared to other conferences. When I was spurring FSU-Big 12 talk, I actually went back to the AP to 1970. Taking out FSU's string of top 4 finishes, which can never be duplicated, the ACC had something ludicrous, like eleven top 10 finishes in forty years. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was disgusting, and put the lie to the idea it was just a down slump for a few years. I don't say that to crap on the ACC football. I say that because if you are going to address the problem, you have to understand the problem to come up with any satisfactory approaches. It's not what FSU has done the last 10 years, it's not Miami probation, it's not Clemson doing nothing in the 1990s, it's not taking BC instead of WVU. It's not any one thing, it's some kind of systemic approach to football. I don't have all the answers, but I think a lot of it has to do with coaching, specifically having a lower threshold of expectations from it's coaches, both head coaches and staff. Something that FSU absolutely faced as well. The bottom line is that this conference recruits better than anyone but the SEC, and has for some time. They send more kids to the NFL than anyone but the SEC. They sit in the sweetest hotbed of talent of any conference but the SEC. There's no reason this conference has to be any worse than second to the SEC. You can make the case that the B1G, PAC and B12 all have obstacles to excellence on the field that are far more difficult to surmount than the obstacles facing the ACC. Quite literally, there is nothing stopping the ACC than just to do it. [/QUOTE]

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