The ACC has had a roller coaster of a season as we're clearly at the season's halfway point and coming down the stretch there are three teams with a shot at a BCS birth; VT, GT and Miami. Neither team truly controls their own destiny but they all do sit squarely in the drivers seat in terms of giving themselves a shot at the BCS payday.

While the Coastal leaders are thinking about the grandiose nature of an Orange Bowl or Sugar Bowl the Atlantic Division is a hodge podge of circumstantial ineptitude dressed up with surprising performances to generate a false sense of accomplishment. BC shellacking NC State, Clemson dominating Wake Forest; there is no real rhyme or reason to the madness that has taken place in the ACC's Atlantic.

Entering week 8 the league features six games with NC State and Virginia Tech licking their wounds during a much needed bye weekend. The major stories entering this week include the Tar Heels hosting their first ever Thursday night game at Kenan Stadium, BC traveling to South Bend for a showdown with the Irish and Wake playing Navy for the third time in thirteen months. Clemson heads down to Miami for the game of the week in the league as the Tigers' vaunted defense does battle against Miami's explosive offensive unit led by Jacory Harris.

Another painful week in the ACC saw three of the four ranked teams get sideswiped. The biggest shocker of course coming when Miami was swarmed asunder in the muck by the Hokies in what was expected to be a hard fought contest. UNC also turned in a disappointing effort, proving their offense was not ready to play real big boy football by posting only 17 rushing yards to GT’s 317. However, the FSU and USF game might have had the biggest impact locally as the school from a couple hours away thoroughly beat the Seminoles. Bobby Bowden’s post game quote epitomizes the feeling in the ACC for week four’s losers:            

The league desperately needs a good showing from its two non-conference games against Oklahoma and Mississippi State in order to save some face before the full onslaught of conference games sets in for October.

QB Russell Wilson; David Bergman/SI

However, the true story of the ACC’s season comes out of Florida. This weekend both the ‘Noles and the Canes took a massive leap toward elevating the ACC to rank of “Super Conference” that commissioner Swofford envisioned with the expansion. FSU throttled BYU in Provo to truly show the nation that the Jacksonville State game was a fluke. The Canes took Coastal Division rival Georgia Tech behind the woodshed in a 33-17 beating that showed the Canes have a suffocating defense to go with stud quarterback Jacory Harris.

This week the league looks to continue to right the ship as we feature three league games, six total BCS contests, one game against a legit non-BCS team and only one FCS competition. 

Just one week removed from playing in a rivalry game against the Clemson Tigers the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets are back on the Thursday Night circuit playing another crucial ACC contest.  This time it is an inter-divisional game against the up and coming Miami Hurricanes, a game that last season saw the Jackets thoroughly throttle the inexperienced Canes 41-23 while piling up 472 yards of rushing offense.

Coming off a largely unimpressive effort offensively the Ramblin’ Wreck looks to hit the ground running against Randy Shannon’s team.  However the Canes have had an extra week to prepare for this game and, after shocking the nation with their firepower on Labor Day, the U looks for their first 2-0 start since 2004. 

Paul Johnson’s team looks to get their offense back on track after being stymied by the Clemson defensive front seven.  Although the Jackets built an impressive lead last Thursday the Wreck only scored sixteen offensive points; no touchdown through sustained drives and relied on their first quarter trickeration to defeat the Tigers.  This week Johnson’s troops need to get their offense back to the rushing machine they’ve been in the past.

As the season opened the original theme of the ACC’s twelve member institutions was to build on the momentum created with the ten bowl teams just a season ago.  However anemic showings as have shifted that theme from building upon existing momentum to generating any semblance of good will toward the conference nationally. More contests such as the Miami-FSU, Clemson-Georgia Tech and Wake Forest-Stanford efforts are needed to slowly erase the FSU-Jacksonville State, Maryland-James Madison debacles of the week two schedule.

FCS games are slowly weaning their way out of the schedule slate as there are only two this week and both NC State and Wake Forest are fully prepared to play their respective in-state competition.  During this week’s ACC conference call both O’Brien and Grobe acknowledged that they could do their part for the ACC by not allowing dispersions to be cast through their respective squads struggling against an FCS opponent.