A lot of Syracuse Orange fans are keenly aware of the shifting conference landscape in college athletics. That means that anytime the ACC schools get together, we need to pay attention to what comes out of those meetings.
With one member of the North Carolina Board of Trustees embracing his inner Tallahassee and claiming that maybe UNC needs to switch conferences, is the demise of the ACC imminent? In a word, No.
That doesn’t mean the tone in Amelia Island should instill a lot of confidence, but at least the football side of house seems to know what needs to be done.
Wake Forest football HC Dave Clawson feels that perception is something that the ACC needs to address immediately
“Whether we think it or not, the fact that an undefeated Florida State got left out of the playoffs, that’s a problem,” Clawson said. “Why was an undefeated Florida State perceived to be less worthy of the playoffs than two teams that lost games?”
The ACC has often marketed the conference in a similar way to the Pac 10/12’s “Conference of Champions”. Winning NCAA titles is great, but in reality no one on the CFP selection committee cares how many field hockey and lacrosse titles you have.
Investing in football sounds good, but to what extent can you force schools to spend? The Orange sure seem to be investing with the facilities upgrades and program support for Fran Brown. Will it match the investment of Florida State or Clemson? Or is it enough to just bring more schools to a point where they
The ACC is also looking to push schools to stop playing road games against G5 schools. That led to another non-ACC/ACC series between NC State and Virginia and we’ll see if Syracuse looks to push the UConn games for 2026 and 2027 to neutral sites as a result. It makes more sense to do that instead of canceling the games.
Not sure about you, but I’m not real comfortable with the current leadership handling this perception issue when you’ve got this guy running things (not Brett).
(s/o to Mike who points out that the reason for this is the PAC 12 GOR expires on August 1st.)
Another strange leadership move was inviting Joe Lunardi in to talk to the men’s basketball coaches. What was the goal there? Was he coming to tell coaches he thinks the league stinks and doesn’t care what they do against P5 opponents? Did he get invited down so that Jeff Capel and Steve Forbes could glare at him for a couple of days.
It wasn’t all bad news though. We got a new Dabo drop and it’s a doozy
