The ACC has voted to add Stanford, Cal, and SMU, in what’s still reportedly the deal we described on Tuesday. NC State reportedly changed its vote despite public pressure from UNC’s board of trustees against the move, and now, the ACC will be 18 teams large. 17 in football.
We don’t have many more thoughts than what we thought on Tuesday: This doesn’t make the ACC better, and while it makes preexisting ACC schools more money in the short term, it might cost comparable money come 2030, if that’s indeed when the introductory period expires. Given that backdrop, it’s understandable why UNC, Florida State, and Clemson opposed the move, and it makes sense why most of the rest of the conference supports it. The ACC is falling behind the Big Ten and SEC, and there are fears of it falling behind the Big 12. If that continues, these ACC schools could go the way of Oregon State and Washington State, who appear definitively headed to the Mountain West (the American Athletic Conference announced they wouldn’t try to add the pair as they acknowledged the loss of SMU). It could be explicit—the league could break up, or be left out of a Power Three structure—or it could be implicit—the league could just stop seeing teams selected for the College Football Playoff and drop its NCAA Tournament numbers—but if current trends hold, the ACC is on a course towards mid-majordom. Adding three schools makes it harder for the worst case—full dissolution, that which beset the Pac-12—to unfold.
What is this, then? This is a move by the ACC’s middle-class majority to try to generate enough inertia to still be treated as a power conference in a world where Florida State and UNC and perhaps a few others someday soon move on. Adding three schools—any three schools, really, but especially three where two of which are known as power conference schools themselves—is insurance against that risk. It’s a weird kind of insurance, though. It’s insurance which makes the risk more likely. What the majority of ACC schools just did is look at FSU and UNC and Clemson and say, We know you might leave. We don’t think we have any chance to keep you. So, we’re going to ignore your desires and just try to build a big enough conference that it can’t entirely fall apart. It’s not just insurance, then. It’s a signal that the ACC’s middle-class majority is resigned to the idea that it will soon be left behind, and to some degree a willing acceptance of that fate.
Is this a smart move? I don’t know. I really don’t know. It sure is doomful, but maybe doom is the correct expectation. It’s the first time we’ve seen a direct insurance play in the conference realignment world, and I’m not sure how to feel. Every other conference realignment move has either been proactive aggression or reactive ass-saving. This is proactive ass-saving, and it says a lot about where the ACC is at.
The ACC is not a particularly strong football conference right now, as we’ve been saying a lot the last couple years. Clemson has receded from the ranks of perennial title contenders, and while Florida State has improved, it’s unlikely that they’ve reached that tier yet. This is true of the Big 12 as well, but the Big 12 has depth just below the top which the ACC lacks, and even the upcoming losses of Oklahoma and Texas should be somewhat balanced out by the addition of a highly competitive Utah program. The ACC is the worst power conference in football right now, worse even than the disintegrating Pac-12.
It wasn’t always this way. In 2016, a case could have been made that the ACC was even better than the SEC, with the bulk of the SEC in such turmoil that the league had to send 8–4 Auburn to the Sugar Bowl. But Alabama held the SEC aloft in a way Clemson presently cannot hold up the ACC. The ACC is bad, and there’s nothing redeeming about it. That’s where the real danger lies. That’s where the ACC could become the Pac-12. If this season doesn’t go well for the ACC, it’ll be three straight years where the ACC Championship is an afterthought for mainstream college football fans. That’s a lot of what sank the Pac-12, and in a Power Four world, if the ACC does lose its best, there isn’t going to be much left. If the New Big 12 has a little success this decade and comes knocking on Louisville’s door in 2033, Louisville might have an easy answer.
It’d be different if men’s basketball was humming on Tobacco Road, but it isn’t. It’d be different if the SEC actively wanted Florida State right now, but it doesn’t. The ACC is in no-man’s land, with its best brands not good enough to play with the big boys and its worse brands adding more water to the soup to try to stretch it through the next round of TV deals. There’s plenty of time, but the ACC needs a lot to change if it isn’t going to become, explicitly or implicitly, a mid-major conference.
What Last Night Meant
Utah survived Florida’s visit, stifling the Gators on the ground and breaking off enough big plays with their backup quarterbacks to get the victory. The Utes are still far from out of the woods, with it unclear when Cam Rising will return and facing a tough trip to Waco next weekend. But, they passed their first test, and it’s still hard to imagine any argument that they’re not a contender for a playoff berth.
Nebraska very nearly opened the Matt Rhule era with a win, but they couldn’t hold on down the stretch, two costly turnovers setting the Minnesota offense up to break through. Were it just a three-point loss, it would have been encouraging, but Nebraska fans have seen too many collapses over the last few years to feel anything but rage from how this three-point loss materialized.
We did run Movelor overnight, though we didn’t include the Arizona State game (because of the haboob delay) and we only updated the Full FBS and Full FCS pages on the site. There weren’t any big changes, but that’s notable in and of itself. Movelor, which does not know anything about Cam Rising’s knee, had Utah slightly underperforming and therefore dropped its rating a small amount, which was enough to outweigh the realization of the first win and slightly decrease the Utes’ playoff probability. Similarly, Minnesota underperformed by enough to drop its own division championship and conference championship probabilities despite beating a Big Ten West foe. With Nebraska suffering a real-life loss, the winners in Movelor’s eyes were Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois, but this is all marginal stuff that’ll be greatly outweighed once we get all of Saturday’s games in the books.
Iowa State vs. UNI
I always hate playing UNI. Not that I think Iowa State shouldn’t do it, but it’s always so scary. Movelor currently has UNI as the eighth-best FCS team, with a rating only five points worse than that of Kansas. Movelor has the spread on this game as only 13.6 points, and it gives the Panthers a 1-in-6 chance of pulling off the upset.
Making matters worse, Northern Iowa doesn’t have the reputation right now of a top FCS team. They finished 6–5 last year with an uncharacteristically poor defense. They missed the playoffs. What the record doesn’t show is that after starting the season 0–3, they finished on a 6–2 run, and that three of their losses came by a field goal or less, including their final loss, to South Dakota State early in November. Quarterback Theo Day is back, 23 years old and a contender to be the FCS player of the year. This might be a tougher game than the one against Ohio, and there is no upside presented should the Cyclones win.
Into this treacherous contest step Rocco Becht and JJ Kohl, a pair of quarterbacks with a combined 15 pass attempts, all thrown by Becht, only seven caught by ISU receivers. Each has four years of eligibility remaining, but Kohl is a true freshman, fresh out of high school at Ankeny and staring down significant snaps in the Cy-Hawk game next week. Who’s the starter? It’s unclear. They’re listed beside one another on the depth chart. Junior college transfer Tanner Hughes might see relief action as well.
Quarterback isn’t the only position shrouded in uncertainty. Of the twelve positions listed on the opening offensive depth chart, five have a large “OR” next to the top name, signifying a timeshare for first string reps. It’s going to be a committee at Jack Trice tomorrow, and there’s going to be a lot of pressure on the defense to stymie Day and assert itself as the top-25 unit it’s reputed to be.
Our model has Iowa State just shy of 50% likely to make a bowl, a number that will most likely increase should the Cyclones win but will depend on factors beyond the final result, including margin and what Iowa State’s other opponents do. They’re a 5.4-win team in the average simulation, and while that speaks to some extent to the schedule this crew is facing, it’s still concerning. Missing a bowl game in two straight seasons used to be commonplace, and it’s not anymore, but it’s a dangerous prospect. Somehow, some way. Can’t look ahead too much to Iowa.
The Baby Bears
The Cubs’ youth movement continues today, with Jordan Wicks turning in another good start in the opener of the doubleheader and outfield prospect Alexander Canario up from AAA to boost the bench bats. Canario, acquired in the Kris Bryant trade, has slugged .524 this year at Iowa, but due to a string of injuries that’s only come over 161 PA’s. It might be a short stay—his development remains a priority, even if winning at the MLB level is the organization’s top immediate goal again—but regardless, the young guys are on their way up, and at the moment, the Cubs lead the opening game of a big four-game set in Cincinnati.
The Giants and Marlins both won last night, turning the screws a bit on the Cubs but still leaving them north of 70% in playoff probability on FanGraphs. Winning this series—taking three games of it—would nearly finish off the Reds, leaving them likely at least three games back of a playoff spot with potentially three whole teams to pass, and making the Cubs–Reds gap a full five games, neutralizing Cincinnati as a threat. Even splitting these, though, would be enough to keep the Cubs in a solid position to make the playoffs. They’ve played themselves to that place.
**
Apologies for the sparse blogging this last week and a half. We’ve been shifting resources to get Movelor up and running for football season. Hopefully, we’re through the blitz of it and we can return to a more regular cadence starting on Monday. Thanks to those of you who read. We enjoy your company, and we want to give you more of our best very soon.
