S$C money bonanza, the results are not really that surprising.

SEC players coming to the ACC. That has to change for the ACC to get back to its old self. I'm not sure what needs to change beyond NIL money but NIL $$$ are #1 through #100 priority for the ACC. Things can change on a dime as we have seen with teams like Michigan and Louisville - not to mention practically the whole SEC. The SEC got a little over 20% of the NCAAT bids - it will be interesting to see how the come out of the first two rounds before they start playing each other. I'm rooting for the rest of the field this year - hope a non-SEC team wins it all. Surprised at myself but I'm rooting for Duke and Houston this year.

at least be competitive. That’s when the power rankings get established.

controlling how they schedule and work the net if they do not win. The ACC needs to change the narrative, if they can, by not being an absolute failure in the early season OOC against good teams and conferences. That is on the players and the coaches.

The SEC is building up the NET rankings early by beating up a bunch of really bad teams in Q4 and then using each other to prop up the rankings. Just look at Texas (NET 39), they have seven Q4 wins ranked from 230-364. They only played a single NCAA tournament team OOC (UConn at #8). And only one Q1 game was OOC, a loss to Ohio St. Meanwhile, UNC (NET 36) is getting flack for going 1-11 in Q1. But look at their schedule, it's insane. (NCAA bracket seed in parenthesis) They played three #1 seeds (for a total of five games) and two #2 seeds. And their Q4 wins were six games ranked 184-226. OOC Q1: Auburn (1) Kansas (7) Michigan St (2) Alabama (2) Florida (1) UCLA (7) in-conference Q1: Louisville (8) Clemson (5) Duke x3 (1) Wake Forest Pitt

when they boatrace the ACC in the ACC/SEC challenge. The ACC is losing to bad or mediocre teams and never gets ahead of the early season narrative. They have to win more early. The argument of bias against the ACC rings more hollow with each passing year as they struggle early and now they have to almost be perfect to get their historical number of sweet 16 or great 8 teams.

Of the ACC top 7 teams, 2 did not play in the challenge. SMU and Stanford. Of the 5 that played, Wake lost on the road at Texas A&M. Louisville lost to a roughly equal Ole Miss team. UNC lost to a great Alabama team. Clemson and Duke won against very good teams (Kentucky and Auburn). So the top of the ACC was 2-3 vs top of SEC and two others did not play. The rest is basically saying the SEC is better than the mid/bottom of the ACC. Is a top team Florida beating a just lost their coach UVA really that impressive?

however you wish. The fact is the only thing the media, pollsters and the general public remembers is that the ACC got boatraced. Matchups and locations are a part of the overall analysis but, 14 - 2 coupled with other higher profile embarrassing losses is an indictment of the ACC no matter how hard you try and spin it.

But, as you note, there's a lot of blame to go around. VT certainly has his doppelganger in Whit.

2

a largely empty suit as time goes on. He was not dealt the strongest hand at the outset but, his actions, or lack thereof, have done very little to distinguish him so far.