As President Casteen gave his State of the University address last week, I began to reflect on the state of our athletic conference, the ACC.
It seems like only yesterday (July 2004, actually) when the league expanded to 11 teams, bringing an end to the beloved home and away series in basketball and the chance to play each team in football every year.
No longer could Virginia fans count on the opportunity to scream at Coach K every season or keep up with all of ACC football. (In fact, since we didn't play N.C. State or Wake Forest home or away in both '04 and '05, most Wahoos had no idea about either squad going into this past season.)
With the addition of Boston College to give the conference a total of 12 schools a year and a half ago, the conference was able to hold the elusive ACC championship game for football.
Now we could be the greatest conference in all the land, right?
ACC Commissioner John Swofford wrote in the 2005-06 ACC Annual Report, "The 2005-06 academic year was a monumental one in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference and what an incredible year it was! In just our first year as 12 members, the conference experienced unprecedented success in academics and athletics, once again confirming the ACC's Tradition of Excellence."
Last season the league won six NCAA team titles -- field hockey, men's soccer, and women's basketball (all by the Terps), women's golf (Duke), men's lacrosse (yeah Wahoos) and men's outdoor track and field (Florida State).
This season Maryland has already taken home national championship honors in field hockey and North Carolina in women's soccer.
Aren't we just the best? Not quite. While the ACC continues to maintain its excellence in the non-revenue sports, football and basketball have seen quite the precipitous decline this season.
ACC football was the top-rated conference by ESPN a season ago. Five conference schools were ranked in the final Bowl Championship Series rankings: Miami (No. 8), Virginia Tech (10), Boston College (21), Florida State (22) and Georgia Tech (24).
Last fall, the ACC finished with only three schools in the final BCS rankings and none in the top 10: Wake Forest (14), Virginia Tech (15) and Boston College (25).
We didn't fare much better in the bowl games, either. Wake Forest fell to No. 6 Louisville in the Orange Bowl and Virginia Tech lost to unranked Georgia in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. If it weren't for Boston College's 37-yard field goal in the final play of the Meineke Bowl against Navy, all three of the ACC schools in the top-25 would have lost in the postseason. (Can't say I lost much sleep over the Hokies collapse, however.)
ACC basketball, usually a strength of our conference, has also seen the wrong kind of turnaround.
In the 2004-05 campaign, the ACC began and finished the season with three of the top five AP-ranked teams, and six teams overall were ranked in the top 25 to begin the year. We finished that season with an AP conference ranking of 95, 16 spots higher than the next closest league: the Big East.
Last season, the ACC finished with only two teams in the AP top 25 poll: North Carolina (10) and Duke (13). We barely edged out the Big Ten for the second highest AP Ranking and were 14 spots behind the first-place Big East (101).
Currently, only two ACC schools are ranked in the latest top 25 AP poll. North Carolina was ranked fourth in the nation and Boston College was 21st. (Even the Dukies are out of the rankings after their first four-game losing skid in 11 years.)
What is going on? Is this the end of our chance to see the top competition in football and basketball come to Charlottesville every season?
Honestly, I am concerned with the state of our football schools after the apparent end of the Miami and Florida State dynasties last fall. At least one of the two programs had been ranked in the top 14 of the final BCS standings since the system's inception in 1998 and two times both were ranked in the top ten (2000 and 2003). The Orange Bowl and Tallahassee are no longer chalked up as automatic losses on the calendar of ACC footballs schools.
Basketball, however, is more than likely in just as great of a slump. After both the 1999-00 and 2001-02 seasons, only Maryland and Duke were ranked in men's basketball and the league responded with seven teams ranked in the final AP rankings of 2003-04.
Yet ACC teams have captured 10 NCAA basketball championships including six of the last 16 titles, and no conference has a better record in the big dance since its inception in 1939. The ACC has produced 21 Final Four teams in the 22 years of the current 64-team format, six more than any other league.
That's nearly 70 years of traditional excellence. The history books say someone in the conference will step up.
Didn't I hear about a team in Charlottesville that's on the rise?
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