News - Sports - College

Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008

With ACC football title hopes gone, Tigers focus on bowl chances

CLEMSON -- The conference championship game is in Clemson's rear view mirror, yet junior tight end Michael Palmer rubbernecks the ACC standings on a weekly basis anyhow.

With two regular-season weekends remaining, an astounding nine of 12 league teams still have a crack at their division title.

The painful irony, of course, is that the landslide preseason favorite to win it all -- Clemson -- is one of the three eliminated from contention.

"It's really kind of frustrating," Palmer said. "If we could have pulled out just one of those games, we'd be in a completely different spot right now."

Instead, the Tigers (5-5, 3-4 ACC) are just another number, one of 12 teams in the only conference where everyone can still attain bowl eligibility.

For Clemson, a postseason hinges on winning its final two games, starting with Saturday's conference finale at Virginia (5-5, 3-3).

While the Cavaliers are fifth in the Coastal Division, they nonetheless can earn a berth in the conference title game if they beat Clemson and Virginia Tech and get a pair of Miami losses, including today's game at Georgia Tech.

Welcome to the wacky ACC, where the only predictable outcome on a yearly basis has been increased parity.

For the first time since 1965, the ACC champion will come equipped with a minimum of two conference losses. This on the heels of consecutive seasons in which one of the ACC's division champs reached the title game with two conference losses.

"It's good for the conference and good for the fans to have so much parity," Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe said. "But it's probably driving the coaches crazy because every week, it's just brutal."

Grobe meant brutal in the sense that there are no easy outs.

On the other hand, this year's jumbled standings mess likely has done little to enhance the national perception that ACC football is more than a cesspool of mediocrity.

The league's highest-ranked team is No. 22 Maryland, followed in short order by No. 23 Miami and No. 25 North Carolina.

But even those seem token placements -- in the last four weeks, ranked ACC teams (none higher than No. 17) have a 5-7 record, with six different teams sliding in and out of the poll.

League supporters point out the ACC owns the second-highest Sagarin Index rating behind the Big 12. It is the only conference with 10 teams at .500 or better. The ACC is on pace for its lowest margin of victory in conference games (10.05 points), as 21 of 38 games have been decided by a touchdown or less.

Conversely, all that likely has little credibility unless the ACC improves its performance on the big stage, where its teams' 1-9 mark in BCS bowl games the last decade has damaged the league's image.

Furthermore, ACC teams haven't done themselves any favors in terms of style points.

A lack of offensive firepower, starting with shaky quarterback play, has plagued the conference for several years.

This season has been no different, as only one ACC offense is ranked in the top 64 nationally in yardage per game (Florida State, 43rd).

The competition for first-team All-ACC quarterback is arguably wide open, and Clemson -- with preseason player of the year Cullen Harper -- is the only ACC team among the nation's top 53 passing offenses.

"There are just a lot of teams that are close, and for the most part in this league, defenses are very good and offenses are in the improving stage," Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer said cautiously.

Which is precisely why several Tigers have found the what-if game so maddening -- they seemingly already had the requisite skill players in place.

Clemson blew fourth-quarter leads to lose three straight games to Maryland, Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. Revisionist history fails to account for how the Tigers would have responded under different circumstances.

But working under the flawed assumption that all other outcomes had stayed the same, they would have had to beat both Maryland and Wake Forest in order to avoid needing some help this weekend.

Of course, were that the case, Clemson would not be in the middle of a coaching search, either.

"It's been a circus this year in the ACC," Palmer said. "Teams will win one week, then they'll go somewhere they're supposed to win and they'll lose."