ACC Aims to Quiet Critics with Bowl Victories
By Stephen Wyatt
@stphnwyatt2
Getty Images
Six ACC football teams will take the field in bowl games on Friday and Saturday. Media pundits are quick to point out how conferences perform in bowl games and use these numbers as a measuring stick. It is advantageous for all six ACC teams to win this weekend, but honestly it holds little or no weight after Sunday.
Five out of the six teams in action don’t deserve to be in bowl games with the exception of Duke, who will take the field in El Paso vs. Arizona State. The other five teams have either six or seven wins, with many of them coming against teams in the lower division. These games will prove nothing more than which conference has the better mediocre teams.
The strength of the ACC will be decided by Clemson, Georgia Tech, Louisville and Florida State. The conference took advantage of the Seminoles’ success by earning an additional high level bowl invitation. The extra bid is a prime opportunity for the ACC to knock off some of the biggest programs in college football, such as Oklahoma, Mississippi State, Georgia and Oregon.
The ACC can achieve postseason success by winning three or four of these matchups, including Florida State earning a berth in the National Championship game. Rivalry weekend provided the conference with some much-needed momentum over the SEC, as they notched wins against Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Kentucky. Football fans have a short memory in sports and the success from November will all be forgotten if these four ACC teams fail to be competitive in major bowl games.
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