On Friday I asked the question of whether the ACC is close to be declared irrelevant as far as football goes. Much of that was based on the fact the ACC was 1-5 against ranked non-conference teams coming into the weekend the lone win being the Miami drubbing of Texas A&M. This weekend has been very good for the ACC. Florida State took down Alabama while Maryland knocked off #10 Rutgers. FSU beating Alabama was not that surprising but Maryland knocking off a top ten team in Rutgers is a huge coup for the conference. Virginia also won their fourth straight game by blowing Pitt out. Even NC State played excellent defense in holding Louisville to 29 points. Too bad the offense is incredibly similar to the Chicago Bears offense. How can you only score 10 points on Louisville? They gave up 42 to Middle Tenn State for goodness sake. Boston College had more trouble scoring points on UMass than one would think and there has to be some question as to whether Matt Ryan is doing enough to make his Heisman case.
As for what is going on in the conference, two games went as expected in terms of the result though perhaps not in terms of the execution. UNC was in the game with Virginia Tech to the last minute of the game. Duke was within three of Miami in the fourth quarter before the Hurricanes put that one away. Granted everyone treats UNC and Duke as bye weeks but I also think those games are expected to be much easier than they have generally been. In other words it looks like basketball season out there with the level of parity in the ACC. The "sort of" shocker for the day comes from Clemson-Georgia Tech where I was compelled to check my calendar since I was under the impression October not November started on Monday. The fact the Tigers chose to begin their annual swoon a good month ahead of time threw me off. Considering many people had Clemson tagged as the best team in the conference following their shredding of the Wolfpack in Raleigh it was somewhat disconcerting to see them castrated by a Georgia Tech squad that was pretty much left for dead following the loss to UVa I can honestly say I have no idea what is going to happen next. Obviously my little feature last week of examining changing media notions might have to be a weekly feature.
UVa 44 Pitt 14
#18 VT 17 UNC 10
Miami 24 Duke 14
#12 BC 24 UMass 14
GT 13 #13 Clemson 3
Louisville 29 NCSU 10
Maryland 34 #10 Rutgers 24
FSU 21 #22 Alabama 14
Record this week: 5-3(yeah that sucks)
Record this season: 35-11