College Football 2009 Arrives At Last!

A few thoughts on the opening weekend of the 2009-2010 college football season:

The ACC Opens Weakly

• Last season, I made the argument --successfully, I think-- that the ACC was a good league. Though they didn't have any teams in the national title race, they had about 12 teams (out of 12) that were good enough to go to a bowl game. The #5-12 teams in the ACC would dominate the #7-12 teams in any other league, even though #s 1-4 would struggle. Despite the effectiveness of that reasoning last season, the ACC's national profile took another hit on opening Saturday when most of the teams lost.


• The ACC was 4-6 in games against teams from other leagues Saturday, including 0-3 against teams from BCS automatic-bid conferences.


• The ACC was 0-2 against the NCAA's Football Championship Subdivision ("the minor leagues"), as the University of Virginia got thumped 26-14 *_at_home_* by the College of William & Mary, and Duke got whipped *_also_at_home_* by the defending FCS champion Richmond Spiders.


• Wake Forest fell *_at_home_* to the Baylor Bears, allowing that team to snap its 12-game/3-year road losing streak against BCS squads.


• Virginia Tech, the ACC's flagship school, was beaten by Alabama in Atlanta. The lost by a smaller margin than Clemson did in this game last season, but still, they lost


• Among the ACC's up-and-coming schools, Maryland was massacred 52-13 at Cal, and NC State was shut down *_at_home_* by South Carolina.


• The ACC schools that did win did so against lower division foes, as BC, Clemson, UNC & GaTech beat up on Northeastern, MTSU, The Citadel, and Jacksonville State, respectively.