The idea of expanding the ACC to 12 schools was to improve the quantity and quality of the conference’s football so as to attract more national attention and dollars. Judging by the preseason polls, the ACC remains what it was before, a middling football conference. There are 119 Division I-A football programs. Only two of the ACC’s 12 school crack the top 25 — which amounts to the top 20 percent of big-time football schools — in the preseason polls: Virginia Tech is 9th in both the AP and USA Today polls, while Florida State is 19th in the AP and 21st in the USA Today polls. And while a few others are close — and eight schools besides Virginia Tech and Florida State get at least one vote in at least one of the polls — that merely reinforces the notion that the ACC is nothing special…
Just as it wasn’t anything special last year, with no ACC team ranked above 17th or 18th (depending upon the poll) at season’s end…
