Un-ACCeptable weekend

Sticking up for the ACC is akin to sticking up for the drunk cousin or uncle who always finds a way to ruin family gatherings.

I thought there was reason to think the ACC was, uh, reformed as it headed into 2010. The Coastal Division looked darn solid -- maybe the best division in college football! -- and the Atlantic had three solid teams (Florida State, Clemson, Boston College).

Even after the ACC went 0-for-2 in marquee opening-weekend games, I was still on the ACC bandwagon. Because hey, at least North Carolina and Virginia Tech didn't get wiped off the field. And at least the ACC seemed to have flushed its habit of suffering embarrassing losses to vastly inferior programs.

The point was: You could see some progress being made.

Well, the drunk uncle couldn't make it two weekends of good behavior. He hit the sauce hard this time and wrecked the weekend.

When the ACC enters a weekend of reckoning with so much hope and anticipation, and exits it with Virginia serving up the most impressive showing (and in a loss), that's a pretty telling indication of just how bad it was.

Really not completely stunned by James Madison over Virginia Tech. Asking a team to play the Thursday after a Saturday game is hard enough. But asking the Hokies, after a crushing Monday-night loss to Boise State, to turn around and play Saturday afternoon was a tremendously difficult proposition.

Yeah, James Madison is an FCS team. But it's not as though we're talking about Presbyterian here.

Still ... ugh.

And Georgia Tech at Kansas ... ugh.

Florida State at Oklahoma ... ugh.

Miami at Ohio State ... ugh.

Not sure how many people expected the Seminoles and Hurricanes to win in Norman and Columbus. If they merely keep it respectable, and Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech don't serve up their stinkers, it's not an awful weekend for the ACC.

But what happened was indefensible. The pundits are going to spend the rest of the season piling on, and it's hard to blame them.

So, where are the ACC's best remaining opportunities to save some face in non-conference matchups? Clemson can certainly help out by winning at Auburn this weekend, and the Tigers will get a shot at ascending South Carolina at Death Valley in the regular-season finale.

Miami is at Pittsburgh on Sept. 23.

Georgia Tech is at Georgia on Nov. 27.

Florida State plays host to Florida the same day.

Then again, there's just as much opportunity for more embarrassment.

Wouldn't be surprised if Stanford drills Wake Forest on Saturday in Palo Alto.

East Carolina will have three opportunities to knock off ACC foes (Virginia Tech, N.C. State and North Carolina).

Middle Tennessee plays at Georgia Tech.

William & Mary, the team that beat Virginia by double digits last year, travels to Chapel Hill this year.

Navy plays Wake Forest and Duke.

Syracuse plays Boston College.

South Florida plays Miami.

Vanderbilt plays Wake Forest.

Is is basketball season yet? That's what ESPN has to be asking itself after ponying up all that cash to televise the ACC's games.

Here's a story on the fallout in Blacksburg.

James Madison was 0-6 all-time against the Hokies, and its past two visits to Blacksburg ended in losses by a combined score of 90-0. Not to mention that Virginia Tech Coach Frank Beamer had never lost to a I-AA foe since taking over the program in 1987.

In the week leading up to this game, James Madison's own coach, Mickey Matthews, called the notion of the Dukes coming into Blacksburg and defeating a program like Virginia Tech "comical."

"When you get right down to it, they didn't want any of our guys," he said.

Jimbo Fisher assesses Florida State's pathetic defensive showing.

(As if the offense was much better.)

The victim on many of the short passes to the outside was sophomore cornerback Greg Reid.

Although Reid did have a career-high 10 tackles, he also missed a number of tackles that turned short passes into big gains.

``It's kind of something I've got to learn and work on a lot,'' Reid said. ``I can kind of cover a little bit, but I've just got to work on tackles. I'm 5-8, 185, so it's kind of hard, but it's my first really big game starting and right now I just feel like it's over and I'm ready to play again.''

Despite the struggles of his young defense, Fisher said he still believes it can become a successful defense as the season goes on.

``We can still be a good defensive football team, and we've got some young guys that need to step in and do whatever it takes and do a better job,'' he said. ``We've got to coach them better, and they've got to play a bit better.''

Jeff Schultz of the AJC sums things up for Georgia Tech in this opening paragraph:

In the final game before opening the defense of its ACC championship, Georgia Tech missed tackles, missed assignments, dropped passes, roughed the kicker, roughed the quarterback, certainly roughed its own fan base, shanked a punt 13 yards, seem to float in and out of consciousness against a team that a week ago was dropped by North Dakota State and looked so bad on defense that one was tempted to ask, “So, anybody have Dave Wommack’s phone number?”

And how about this snippet from Al Groh:

When asked if Kansas — who managed only a field goal in 12 possessions against North Dakota State — is a team that should score four touchdowns against the Jackets, Groh got a little testy.

“That’s fantasy football. I just deal with what happened today,” he said.

But it’s not fantasy — Kansas really did score only three points.

Groh: “That was then. This is now. That’s not the game coaches play. Coaches play the game that’s played today. The rest is talk radio, those guys who have all the answers.”

Gosh, at least Paul Johnson has some wins to back up the relentless arrogance.

Fired up for the trip to The Plains this weekend.

Here's what Gene Chizik had to say yesterday about the Tigers vs. Tigers clash:

On Clemson: “The first thing that stands out is they’re a very talented football team. It’s very evident that it’s a very physical football, very physical on both sides of the ball. It’s going to be a great, great challenge for us. It’s going to be one of those old-fashioned fights.”

Interesting take on Auburn's offense, which wasn't as expansive and aggressive as I anticipated in last week's win at Mississippi State:

“The flexibility with the offense is there. We’d like to pace people and be able to gain an advantage that way — if the shoe fits. If you flip that, there are times when you have to milk the clock, eat the clock. A lot of it “

Here's his take on Cam Newton leading the team in rushing:

“I don’t prefer it to be that way at all. Our leading rushers need to be our tailbacks. This is a long season. What you don’t want to do it take away play-making ability from guys who have that.”

More good tidbits from this Auburn blog.

-- I'd say the biggest news to emerge in the past couple of hours was OG Mike Berry's disclosure that Lee Ziemba practiced today. I'd guess it's safe to assume that Ziemba's starting streak is not in jeopardy.

-- Defensive coordinator Ted Roof spent a few years coaching against Clemson, as he spent 10 years coaching in the ACC. He had nothing but high praise for the school many often confuse with Auburn. "Year in and year out, they’re one of the most athletic teams that’s ever on the schedule," he said. "They’re well coached, they play hard and they’re physical. That’s a pretty good combination. When I think of Clemson, that’s what I think about."

-- As for the 33 carries he's had, Newton said he's not concerned about his added risk to injury. "I'm an Auburn man. Whatever the coaches tell me to do, I do it," he said. "You're playing football. That's as much of an injury risk as anything else. I would rather run the ball 15 times in a game rather than leaving a game that we have not had the productivity that I wish we would have had and said I wish I would have run it more."

-- One astute reporter noticed that Newton has been throwing deep balls off his back foot. That's a no-no. Newton said he's been working on it since Day 1. "That's the consistency that I have to get better at," he said. "As the game goes on, every throw is not going to be a throw where you can sit back there and pat the ball and throw on time. Sometimes you're going to be off balanced and whatnot and you still have to make an accurate throw."

Gene Sapakoff fires up the Braggin' Rights Barometer and gets this readout: Sakerlina 24, Clemson 13.

In the Independent-Mail, Greg Wallace says Clemson's 2010 season starts now.

For the first two weeks, Clemson bubbled just below the national radar – Sunday, the USA Today coaches’ poll ranked the Tigers 26th, just outside the top 25.

This week, the Tigers will either fly onto that radar or sink completely off it.

So, a few weeks after a certain someone questions whether Rich Rodriguez's offense will flourish at Michigan, a kid named Denard Robinson has made the Wolverines the story of college football so far.



LW