CLEMSON — When the ACC expanded in 2004 to bring Virginia Tech, Boston College and Miami into the conference, it forever changed the landscape of the league. It also did more than that, unfortunately.
Though expansion is good for the bottom line, it is not entirely good for the games or the rivalries that existed in the old format, when the ACC was more regional and had just the charter members – Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, NC State, Virginia and Wake Forest. And yes, even the additions of Georgia Tech (1979) and Florida State (1991) made sense and, of course, fit well in the landscape of the conference.
But starting in 2004 and later with the additions of Louisville, Pitt, Syracuse and Notre Dame in 2014 and California, SMU and Stanford in 2024, the league is a shell of what it used to be.
Clemson has to fly across country on a short week and play Cal in Berkely a week from Friday.
How is that ACC Football?
Simple!
It’s not.
The ACC has suffered as a result and now the league plays games on Thursday and Friday nights regularly, and for the most part is the punchline for most Power Four jokes in college football.
ACC basketball does not even get the respect it deserves anymore.
Why?
Because it was the Tabacco Road Rivalries that made the conference so intriguing. But that is gone now.
I am sorry, Louisville vs. Syracuse does not scream ACC Basketball to me, it definitely does not scream anything about Southern Football. Louisville is in Kentucky, so I will give it a pass, but Louisville is not a football school nor is it an ACC school and I will never think of it as one.
Though it is not the matchup it once was in college football, it’s nice to see North Carolina’s baby blue come into Death Valley and clash with Clemson’s orange on Saturday. It brings back old times, times when the ACC was much simpler and the league had more clout than it does now.
From 1977-87, in most of those years, Clemson and UNC were in the mix for ACC supremacy. Of those 11 meetings, eight were decided by one score and seven of those were decided by four points or less.
But as tight as those games were, the Tigers held an 8-2-1 record. Regardless, the matchups were classics and the number of NFL stars to come out of those matchups was endless. Guys like Lawrence Taylor, Kelvin Bryant, Ethan Horton, William Fuller and Harris Barton from Carolina. Then there was Dwight Clark, Steve Fuller, Kevin Mack, Terry Kinard, and William Perry from Clemson.
It was a true ACC rivalry.
The games were epic.
They tied in 1977. Clemson won a classic in Death Valley in 1978.
Lawrence Taylor’s goal-line stand by himself preserved North Carolina’s 24-19 win in 1980. Clemson’s 10-8 win in 1981 is still considered the most physical game ever played between two ACC teams.
The Tar Heels won a 21-20 classic in 1985 and in 1987 David Treadwell won Clemson another ACC Championship with a last second field goal.
The Clemson-North Carolina series started in 1897, just the sixth game in Clemson’s history, and the first game for the Tigers against a team presently in the ACC.
From 1957-2003, Clemson and North Carolina played every year. Since then, they have met just nine times and two of those meetings were in the ACC Championship Game.
So, that is seven regular season meetings in the last 23 years for two teams that started the ACC. Clemson has played Louisville, Boston College, Syracuse and Virginia Tech more times in that span than the Tar Heels – and that is a problem.
The ACC just is not the ACC Anymore.