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I was looking over the schedule for week 1, and it seemed like last year I was salivating at seeing some of the matchups in the first weekend, but not really so much this year.

Boise State vs. Georgia will be a good one, and Oregon vs. LSU should also be a good one too. But other than that, what do we really have to see that is must-see football?

TCU vs. Baylor? USF-Notre Dame? Miami vs. Maryland? SMU vs. Texas A&M?

Last year, on Thursday night we had some interesting matchups: PItt-Utah, USC-Hawaii. This year? Wake Forest vs. Syracuse? UNLV vs. Wisconsin? Mississippi State vs. Memphis? This is the best the NCAA can come up with?!

I blame Virginia Tech. I know Appalachian State is no pushover, but I've gotten used to them playing Alabama and Boise the past two years on opening weekend. I could usually count on them to have one of those intriguing matchups to get me excited about the college football season, and Frank Beamer you have disappointed me!

You're gonna have to wait until 2013, VT vs. Bama as the season opener. Honestly VT needed a break from the prime time matchups. We had done it practically every year recently, with not good success. Lost of Bama, Boise the last two. Its a home run start to your season if you win, and long climb back (and you prob won't get back into NC hunt) if you lose. I think they wanna also give Logan Thomas room to hit the ground running and gel by the time Clemson comes in early October.

I haven't looked at the rest of the schedule yet. Miami/MD would feature two new coaches, interest from me as the ACC has had a lot of coach/qb turnover recently. Wanna see what Golden and Edsell have out of the gate. I know in Sept sometime Miami plays OU again, but that might not be any better for Miami than last year.

Tech gets hurt in the title hunt because the ACC has lost a lot of prestige in the past few years. It's really just a middling conference at this point in time.

If there is a positive however is that Florida State seems back on the rise, and Miami could be back up if Golden does some things.

The ACC needs one other "rock star" program so that if/when Tech beats them, it means something to voters. I'm not sure that team is FSU this year, because they lost a lot of their best players from last year's surprise team. Maybe it's Maryland. I guess we'll see what they have to offer on September 5.

You're totally right about the ACC, been a vt league for a long time now. Its weird, if you look at nfl talent placement the acc might actually be ahead of the sec believe it or not. The problem is 3 issues imo. One, QB's have been either too inconsistent, not coached up enough or simply weren't that good. Two, the coaching in the leauge keeps turning over and hasn't been that great. Three, FSU and Miami fell off the face of earth for a decade.

When the acc brought in VT, Miami, BC for football prowless. VT delivered beyond expectations and has owned the league, Miami withered. VT has won something like 8/9 of the last 11/12 over Miami.

If you get VT to say up, then FSU and Miami back...thats level with the sec or anybody elses best.

Some middling programs need to stand up like Clemson, GT, MD, NCSt types that could be a lot better for a myriad of reasons, but always have something not dialed in. Then you had a UNC who went for the top tier by cheating. Funny comment the other day, UNC cheated this much??.....they just forgot the winning part like usc or osu.

Yeah, being 7-5 or 8-4 in the current state of things just isn't going to cut it for programs like Clemson, GA Tech, BC, N.C. State, etc.

The Big 12 has respect because it has Texas and Oklahoma, and even when one of those schools has a down year, you still have teams like Nebraska, Missouri, Okie State doing well to pick up the slack. The Pac-10 even though they lost USC, Oregon and Stanford are keeping that conference in the title hunt. Penn State, Ohio State, Iowa keep the Big 10 fat, and when teams like Michigan State and Wisconsin are good, it's even more respectable.

At this point, Tech is really no better off than Boise State or TCU, except for the fact that it would be possible for Tech to lose a game and still be in the hunt at the end of the year. But that's basically what it boils down to, with the ACC being in its current state, Tech would have to go 12-1 to get any real national respect.

This year, in order for the ACC to garner that level of respect, you probably need BC to beat Northwestern opening weekend, then have FSU upset Oklahoma in Week 3. Miami vs. Ohio State, Clemson vs. Auburn, these need to be wins. Even though OSU and Auburn are proabbly going to be middling teams this year, they are recognizable Ws. By and large, all those ACC schools need to win their non-conference games, so that later in the year if/when Tech beats them it's going to move in the polls.

The Big East suffers from similar issues, except they don't even have a TEch or FSU going for them. Which is one of the reasons why I'm so disappointed with Pitt, they had ample opportunity over the past 3 years to really run away with that conference, and they failed to deliver every year. It was just not that long ago that teams like Rutgers, Louisville, Cincy, USF were all programs on the rise, but they all fell by the wayside, and Pitt was unable to fill that void.

That's why it can only help the Big East with TCU now in the conference. If they can be the Tech, it gives PItt a chance to rise up and be the Florida State.

Saw last night LSU v Oregon, Sept 3. Not opening weekend, but that game should be awesome.

ACC vs. BE is gonna get very interesting if the conference realignment armageddon talks resume. They're certainly the worst positioned. I honestly think the acc only has room to improve as fsu will be much better this year, and I like what I've heard from Golden so far (ie. who gives a damn about swagger when we don't win anymore) fwiw. TCU added to BE was a great move, and I hear you on Pitt maybe missing the window to fill up the top space and try and dig in to stay there.

More stirring recently as UT is trying for their own Longhorns network, along with televising Texas high school football game (which imo would give them an unfair recruiting adv). So as a result of that rumbling, the sec is back to exploring ways to be proactive. Two schools how they would acomplish...OU and TT from big 12 or two from VT, FSU, Clemson, NCSt. Add four teams, be a super conference. But my point above was that the be/acc being the worst means they're the most likely to get picked off.