The ACC Coastal is Flooded With Awfulness

The Atlantic Coast Conference is atrocious! The conference is filled with sub-par teams, outright disappointments, one lost soul, and one super power. Without Clemson, the super power of the conference, it could be argued that the entire conference be relegated to the “Group of Five”. Frankly, the Coastal Division (which consists of seven of the fourteen teams in the ACC) is essentially a basket of disappointment and unpredictability, and because of that, mediocrity produces entertainment.

Other than Georgia Tech, which is the dumpster fire of not only the Coastal Division but the entire conference, the Coastal Division is very much up for grabs. There isn’t one team who is undefeated in league play and no team has more than four wins upon reaching the midpoint of the 2019 season. There is currently a three-way tie for first place in the division (Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia) and in turn, a chance at being the sacrificial lamb to Clemson’s buzz saw during the ACC Conference Championship game in Charlotte.

The Coastal Division has been a crap shoot for nearly a decade. A good tavern trivia question would be when was the last time an ACC Coastal Division Team won the ACC Conference in football? The answer would be the 2010 season when Virginia Tech knocked off Florida State. Now, in more recent times, the conference champion is exclusively from the Atlantic Division and, if it wasn’t for the Jameis Winston years at Florida State, the champion is almost exclusively Clemson. According to vegasinsider.com, in the past decade less than half of all the ACC Championship Games had a line less than or equal to a touchdown.  This  seems to be accurate as from 2008 to 2018 the Championship game has been decided by more than a touchdown six times.

Obviously, it is a hasty generalization to suppose that a division of a conference is inadequate due to its lack of conference championships. Usually each conference is dominated by a few schools in the division. For instance, in the Big Ten the usual contenders for the conference crown are Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, and Penn State (all from the East Division). Though one of these teams usually achieves the Big Ten Championship, it isn’t as like they face little to no competition from the West. On the contrary, the ACC Costal has been decreasing in the amount of top 25 teams since its peak in 2009 when it had three top 25 teams at the end of the year. The Coastal cratered last year when the division failed to crack the Top 25 – it’s looking to repeat such a feat in 2019.

The reasoning for such poor performances can be attributed to mixture of two components. The first being players. The other is coaching and coaching turnover. If recruiting was the issue, it would be easy to presume that the Coastal Division teams would routinely be unable to enter the top half of the ACC’s yearly recruiting rankings. According to rivals.com, a website that focuses on college football and basketball recruiting, there has never been a year in which the Atlantic Division outnumbered the Coastal Division in terms of making the top half of the conference’s recruiting rankings. Actually, eight of these eleven years there were an equal number of Atlantic Division and Coastal Division teams in the top half, while the other three years there were four Coastal Division teams to two Atlantic Division Teams. There is no doubt that the recruiting classes may vary drastically even within the top half of the conference, but there is reason to believe, especially the years in which the Coastal Division had better recruiting classes than the Atlantic, such as 2009, 2011, and 2014, that the Coastal Division would be able to produce more top 25 teams. This appears not to be the case. The years proceeding both 2009 and 2011 failed to garner the Coastal Division more than one team to reach the Top 25.  Only in the years immediately proceeding the 2014 season was the Coastal Division able to muster 2 teams to reach the Top 25. In other words, the failure of the Coastal Division, especially the teams that routinely ranked in the top six in terms of the conference recruiting rankings (Miami and Virginia Tech), is not the players’ fault but more so the coaches’ inability to utilize the talent that they have acquired.

Three of the four newly hired ACC head coaches were hired for teams in the Coastal Division. Miami, who on paper looked to be the most talented team in the division, hired their former defensive coordinator, Manny Diaz. Diaz was hired after Miami’s previous head coach, Mark Richt, abruptly departed after three seasons with the team.  Ironically Diaz accepted to be the head coach at Temple, but two weeks later quickly turned around and returned to Miami to takeover the reigns. Mack Brown, the former longtime head coach of Texas and also ESPN College Football Analyst, returns to his previous employer by becoming the head coach of the University of North Carolina again (he was there previously from 1988 to 1997). Geoff Collins is the new head coach of Georgia Tech and with his creative recruiting techniques he hopes to get Georgia Tech moving in the right direction. Virginia Tech’s head coach, Jeff Fuente, became the ACC Coach of the Year in his first year at the school by going 10-4 and winning the Coastal Division. However, that may be the high-water mark of his tenure at Virginia Tech due to each proceeding season becoming bleaker.

The Coastal Division is now this pathetic, self-indulgent cluster of universities which whenever they face disappointment, rely on romanticizing their past instead of coming to the reality that they stink. Every time a Miami fan throws up the “U”, or whenever a Hokie relishes the days of its long time head coach, Frank Beamer, it’s  hard to resist comparing their expression to a Cincinnati Reds’ pre-game “pump up” promo in which 95% consists of the Big Red Machine (i.e. highlights nearly half a century old). It’s great to remember the past, but it’s even more important to understand what made that past glorious and to use those same strategies in the present.