Yes, we know it was a Georgia Tech win. And a well-deserved one at that. But for the purposes of the ACC’s national prestige and what the Florida State loss means for the ACC, the Yellow Jackets celebration is a different topic.
Two Sides of the Same Coin
Conference commissioner Jim Phillips may have had a little, well-hidden smirk on his face when Aidan Birr hit the game-winning field goal to give Georgia Tech the 24-21 win over Florida State in Dublin, Ireland. But it was only a momentary smirk. The #10 team in the country, the prohibitive favorite to win the ACC, just got beat with all of college football watching.
This is week zero. There is only a handful of games being played at all, and none were on at the same time as FSU vs. GA Tech. Everyone saw the conference favorite go down. The Seminoles are 0-1 overall and 0-1 in the conference. The sting is widespread.
The Perception Problem and Family Fights
At the ACC Kickoff in Charlotte last month, Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson said, “The ACC does not have a football problem. It has a perception problem. And the way to fix that is to win the big games.” Obviously, the thinking was to win the big out-of-conference matchups to fix the perception problem. But even in a conference game, the #10 team in the country, a 10.5-point favorite, going down to a team picked to finish ninth in the conference, adds to the perception problem.
There is no love lost between Florida State and the commissioner’s office. The school is suing in Leon County, FL to get out of the conference. The conference is countersuing in Mecklenburg County, NC for breach of contract.
FSU has already lost a motion to dismiss in the North Carolina version of the legal fights and is waiting for its turn next year at the North Carolina State Supreme Court. The ACC lost a similar motion in Florida and is appealing. Phillips can spin on ESPN that it all gets put aside because football is here. But the conference’s appeals process starts in three weeks in Florida. Nothing is moving aside.
When an undefeated Florida State team won the ACC championship last year but got left out of the four-team playoff, Seminole Nation blamed everyone from the playoff committee to Kirk Herbstreit, to ESPN. They also blamed Phillips and the conference office for not fighting for them enough to make it in. The state attorney general was even demanding investigations into what “some” considered a swampy conspiracy.
The ACC Needs a Good FSU
But even with all of that being the case, the ACC needs its marquee talent to act like headliners on the biggest stages.
There will be plenty of, “The media did not know what it was doing with its pre-season votes.” That will go along with, “It’s a wide-open conference, and that is great.”
The media knew exactly what it was doing. There was every valid reason to vote for Florida State as the top team. Heck, the Seminoles may still win the conference. And that segues into the second point. A “wide-open conference” is not good for the ACC’s perception issues. It says there are many good teams, but likely no great ones. The chaos is fun for the fans, and admittedly some of the media. But it is not good for the perception problem that Clawson referenced and Phillips is trying to work through.
The #10 team in the country, the current torch bearer for the ACC, lost in Week 0, and it is going to be the CFB headline story for the rest of the weekend. Unless Deion Sanders pulls some other absurd stunt that moves our malleable attention span.
Phillips can love FSU or be pissed off at them for everything in the last nine months. But the reality is he needs them, and Saturday’s game did not help.
