ACC football has a chance to seize the spotlight in wake of conference postponements

How ACC football can capitalize on conference cancelations.

2019 was perhaps the worst year of the past decade for ACC football.

That’s not a reality a fan of one of its programs wants to acknowledge, but the facts are hard to ignore. Every feasible way one could look at it, ACC football is on the steepest downward trajectory among the power five football hierarchy.

The final 2019-20 RPI conference rankings saw the ACC rated as the sixth-best conference behind its fellow power fives and the American Athletic Conference.

The Colley Matrix ranked the ACC the seventh-best conference last season behind the other four power fives, the AAC, and the Mountain West Conference (big yikes).

CBS Sports placed the ACC sixth, Bleacher Report was nice enough to nudge the conference up to fifth in their postseason rankings (but not before taking a dig at Louisville), and College Football News gave the conference a solid Clemson bump up to No. 3 in their offseason ratings.

The decline of ACC football

Regardless of the rating system, man-made, computer model, or otherwise, that one could use to measure conference success, the ACC is a shadow of what it used to be. The national perception of the conference is tepid at best.

“There’s Clemson, the Grand Canyon, a pit of misery, and then four-loss Virginia — the second-best team in the conference,” Barrett Sallee of CBS Sports wrote.

Surmise it to say that the ACC has seen far better days- And if it weren’t for consummate workhorse Clemson bearing the weight of the conference, its reputation would resemble early 2010s Big East levels of ugly.

It wasn’t all that long ago, though, that the ACC was viewed as one of the top dogs among its power conference brethren.

And, by not long ago, we are literally talking, like, 2016- A season where the ACC finished third in the RPI and first in the Colley Matrix. The conference boasted the national champion, Clemson, the Heisman Trophy winner and runner-up, Lamar Jackson and DeShaun Watson, and saw five teams ranked in the top 21 of the final AP Poll. Not to mention that the ACC was not far removed from Florida State’s 2014 national title.

The state of the ACC, as recently as three years ago, was completely different than the lackluster product on the field today.

Historically, the ACC has been a top-three or four conference year in and year out. However, those days are a far cry from the current national perception. The conference has been the equivalent of Clemson doing all of the work and then the Syracuse and Georgia Techs slapping their name on a group project to receive credit.

One could argue that the ACC is in rebuilding mode; A retooling during a period where the conference lost some heavyweight coaches. However, there’s an unbalanced feel overall that doesn’t necessarily validate that notion.

The ACC Coastal Division is a revolving door of mediocrity- An Atlanta I-65 South construction zone of high-level amateur football. The victor receives the “opportunity” to take its lumps in the conference championship game against whoever they have the displeasure of meeting- Likely Clemson at this point.

Miami, Pittsburgh, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Duke, and North Carolina pretty much feel like the same program on the outset- And maybe it’s because there’s been so much parity on that side of the league. Each team has been represented in the conference championship game since FSU’s title run. Seven different teams. Seven different representatives in the championship game.

That vanilla, flavor of the week, cannibalization from within on the coastal side only further serves to juxtapose the Atlantic division- One dominated primarily by two teams.

Florida State or Clemson has been in every title game over the last decade, with Louisville serving as the only real challenger in 2014 and 2016.

Outside of that, however. the ACC has not lived up to its billing.

How ACC football can rebound

That’s why the recent drama across the college football landscape offers so much intrigue for a league like the ACC. A conference dying to be revitalized once and for all.

After wavering back and forth for weeks, and seemingly drawing no closer to any sort of reasonable solution, the Big Ten Conference shut down all fall sports for the remainder of the year.

Soon thereafter, the Pac-12 followed suit by making an official announcement as well.

Players, like Ohio State’s Justin fields, are hurt. After arguing OSU’s case publicly for weeks, moments after the news came down he tweeted a simple, “smh.” Louisville coach Scott Satterfield said players were crying in team meetings thinking about the rumors. One can only imagine the emotions in the locker rooms of teams that have already been forced to shut it down.

Coaches are furious. “A staff member from a prominent Big 10 program just told me he is ‘pissed. Sad. Speechless. Shocked. All mixed into one,'” tweeted ESPN’s Marty Smith. “Says the players are devastated.”

The ACC, however, has remained steadfast in its plan to play, the conference said in an update on Tuesday.

“The ACC will continue to make decisions based on medical advice, inclusive of our Medical Advisory Group, local and state health guidelines, and do so in a way that appropriately coincides with our universities’ academic missions.”

“We understand the need to stay flexible and be prepared to adjust as medical information and the landscape evolves.”

ACC coaches that have spoken with media are all-in on making the 2020 season happen as planned.

“We are trying to move forward (with playing), absolutely,” an ACC official told CBS Sports Tuesday.

Louisville’s Scott Satterfield, who has become a leading voice in the ACC’s fight for a season was strongly opinionated in public appearances on Monday and Tuesday.

"“We choose to live in a positive mindset, and that is, we’re going to play,” Satterfield said in a previously unscheduled presser Monday. “That’s why we’re doing all the things we’re doing, that’s why we’ve had no cases in our program because the guys are doing things right. They’re coming over here and they have purpose in their lives right now. They know to come over here and they’re practicing, they’re meeting, they’re lifting, they’re running, they’re doing all those things. They don’t want to jeopardize all that, so when they leave here they’re doing the right things and that’s all we can do. It gives them purpose.”"

Satterfield continued, calling out conference leadership:

"“Some of the leadership in some of these leagues, to me, are lacking in the fact that when we set a plan and said this is what we’re moving forward with, let’s stick to it, until we don’t need to stick to it anymore. That’s the frustrating part. We’re playing with these 18-22-year-olds’ minds by some of these leagues doing these things, this yo-yo, saying we’re going to do one thing one day and two days later tell them we’re going to do this right here. That’s not leadership. We had months to plan out how we’re going to come back, how we’re going to do this, and we’ve been doing it.”"

Satterfield joined the Today Show on Tuesday and continued to back up his comments. He clarified just how strict Louisville football’s testing measures have been in the wake of the pandemic.

A conference determined to play

What remains is an ACC conference that seemingly has a common goal in mind and a leadership group that appears to have its stuff the most together.

ESPN reporter Andrea Adelson supported this with testing results via a Twitter thread on Tuesday. “As I mentioned before,” Adelson said, “ACC teams have not had any recent positive tests. Just learned that Louisville tested over 100 football players today and had zero positives.

“UNC has had zero positives for a month. Same for Pitt. Virginia no positives since July 24. BC had no positives in its latest round of testing. Could go on but you get the point. As of right now, ACC football programs feel good. But it has to continue (with) student body return.”

With this in mind, perhaps things are in line for the conference to try and make a return to form in 2020.

Just how much does the ACC stand to benefit from playing a season?

ACC playing means added excitement and national exposure

To start, the ACC could benefit from the added exposure in 2020.

Without the Big Ten and Pac-12, much of the attention of the college football landscape would turn to the ACC.

The conference has already reached an agreement to include Notre Dame among a full slate of games this season, with the Fighting Irish given the same opportunity to compete for a conference title.

Having one of the strongest brands in football and a preseason top 10 team joining the fold only serves to benefit the conference as a whole and make things more competitive.

Add to the fact that the conference has done away with the aforementioned divisions, and you have a recipe for a conference that is much more competitive from top to bottom, and much more apt to draw the eyes of national audiences on Saturdays.

If you were to remove the conferences that already opted out, the ACC would have seven teams in the top 25 as it is currently structured- Second only to the SEC’s nine, but ahead of five in the Big XII.

Potential power five transfers

ACC schools have to be salivating at the thought of what the transfer market could bring without the Big Ten and Pac-12 playing this season.

At this point, it would only be guesswork to try and figure out if college football could safely and effectively see players navigate the transfer market. However, if it is possible, this unique situation could certainly stand to benefit ACC squads.

Particularly in the case of graduate transfers who are not guaranteed another season, there could be a lot of movement.

There is a lot left to unfold and there are some stormy waters to traverse, but with so little time left before the season is set to start, the transfer market could potentially be a site to behold with the remaining conferences- the ACC included- becoming the benefactors.

A massive jumpstart towards the future

Brand recognition, expanded recruiting budgets, and continued program continuity are only the beginning of the benefits that ACC programs could reap.

Without a college football season for at least 40 percent of the major conference brands, it cannot be understated how much separation the ACC could create between itself and the conferences choosing to sit out.

Just time spent together alone has an overall positive impact on a team’s psyche. Now, imagine being a year ahead in every single facet of the game.

Schools like Ohio State, Michigan, USC, Oregon, Stanford, and more will have a year of no games on television, no reps under their belts, and no revenue generated from games.

Without that all-important revenue- the vast majority of which is reinvested into the programs- set-backs could last years, if not decades in some worst-case scenarios.

The ACC has a golden opportunity, not to kick other conferences and schools while they are down, but to take advantage of a once-in-a-century type of opportunity. A chance that could create the necessary distance to become the power that it once was.