Coming to an ACC Stadium Near You: The Excitement of the ACC Title Game

Coming to an ACC Stadium Near You: The Excitement Of The ACC Title Game The brief, largely miserable existence of the ACC title game has been marked with a distinct lack of je ne sais quoi...

Oh, right, I do know quoi: fans.

Treated to games like Wake Forest-Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech-Boston College in Jacksonville, fans have turned on the TV and enjoyed a nice nap in the middle of the third quarter instead of driving/flying hundreds of miles to find out which ACC team gets to face Pittsburgh in the BCS game everyone pretends doesn't exist. The thing has all the atmosphere of the Humanitarian Bowl, without the Humanitarian Bowl's excellent excuse. ("It's Boise in December," it says, "what do you expect? At least I'm not named after a website.")

And now you might get that lack of quoi everywhere else in the ACC.

Virginia:

As of Friday, Virginia officials said current season-ticket sales for the upcoming slate are at 30,140, a drop of 14.6 percent from the same date in 2008.

Florida State:

Florida State's season ticket numbers are down 13.4 percent from matching last year's total of 38,400 season tickets sold last year.

Clemson (article possesses oh-snap photo from the spring game displaying wholly empty upper deck, to boot):

Clemson has experienced a 12 percent decline in season-ticket sales this season, which school officials pin almost exclusively on the nation's economic downturn.

Elsewhere, N.C. State is down four to six percent, Virginia Tech had a tougher time selling out than usual -- sales opened to the public -- and Georgia Tech ... well, Tech fans went nuts after beating Georgia for the first time in forever and ticket sales are up. The overall picture, however, is well down. Notoriously fickle Miami fans are probably defecting to Cuba as we speak.

Though the ACC is far from alone here -- USF is down almost 20 percent and even glamour schools like Michigan are offering season tickets to the general public, if on a one-time basis -- I doubt there's going to be an increase in empty seats at SEC and Big Ten games this fall. The prices people pay on the secondary market will fall and schools will cut more deals to less well-heeled donors, but the people will be there. The ACC, Big East, and Pac-10, on the other hand, might have some embarrassing moments when the camera pans the crowd only to find a confused exchange student trying to get some peace and quiet after his roommate sent him into sexile.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.