The Red Herring of Conference 'Competition'

I won't debate the need for the ACC to improve its status relative to other conferences in football. Cite the cyclical nature of conference strength, sure. It does vary wildly from year to year, and can often look far worse than it actually is thanks to a bad bowl season. (See the Big Ten's past two years as an example of how low a conference's national reputation can plummet in a short time. Fair? No. Present? Absolutely.)

What I will debate is the proposition that the ACC has to compete on any level with a conference like the SEC, a mega-conference approached only by the Big 12 in terms of national profile and local fervor. The ACC's expansion to 12 teams has, as Tony Barnhart points out here, has been far more successful than you might imagine. The revenue is up from $21 million annually to $37.6 million last year, the conference sent 10 teams to bowl games last year, and there's a new television contract on the way.

That new television contract is what Mr. College Football believes is so crucial to the ACC, particularly because of the long shadow cast by the SEC's massive TV deal with ESPN. How massive? ESPN has never co-branded with a sports league before this deal, something which means nothing to fans like me, but is a really big deal to suits who think a lot about these things. Not with the NFL, not with MLB, not with any of them: only the SEC gets their circular seal merged with ESPN, making the Hillbilly Hollywood League something beyond an official partner and something closer to a cornerstone product.

The ACC could try to compete on this level, sure. They could also try to package lacrosse to Chinese state television for $18 billion a year, but that's not happening. Realistically, the ACC's future as a football conference lies in shoring up local support for its teams, the very kind of insanely dedicated local support that turned the SEC into the financial behemoth it is today. Start from the ground up, rather than from the top down, by making games even more affordable, advertising locally, and generating buzz for the second favorite sport of the conference. It will be an uphill battle, and take decades, but it would ultimately yield more long-term gains than doubling down on a large television contract only to have ample screen time for viewers to see half-full stadiums and mediocre football.

Fan-friendly marketing won't do the trick alone, though. One particularly crucial step for the conference to improve its overall status among college football's BCS mafia families: make better coaching hires to improve and liven up the product on the field. The ACC has suffered tremendously from a lack of interesting football like the pass-happy, aggressive style one might see in the Big 12 on any given weekend. Instead, the style of ball in the ACC mirrors the pro-style muddles of the Eastern Corridor's first football love, the NFL, and is taught by a hoary crew of respected elder coaches whose combined voltage reading on the excitement scale reads somewhere around zero: Friedgen, Davis, O'Brien ... all fine coaches with demonstrated records of success, but not exactly the crew of jolly mercenaries the SEC has sailing the seas at the moment, and not exactly a group working on football's cutting edge of strategy and innovation. (See: Bowden, Bobby.)

When the time comes to replace one, ACC schools should shun some of the conservatism hampering their searches and go with a younger or slightly less conventional choice for the position. It worked for Georgia Tech with Paul Johnson, an option coach whose attack not only worked in the ACC but also restored the Jackets to conference respectability. It would work just fine for another school when the time comes, too. Or you could just hire a retread, of course. That's always an option in the ACC, it seems.

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