2013 ACC football previews, team by team: Advanced stats and 10 things to know

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

It takes some breaks. Alabama benefiting from missed field goals in both 2011 (Oklahoma State vs. Iowa State) and 2012 (Oregon vs. Stanford) to get back into the national title hunt after a home loss. Auburn going 7-0 in one-possession games in 2010. Florida going 5-0 in such games in 2006. About 15 teams losing at key times to get LSU into the BCS title game with two losses. Et cetera. In the end, no matter how good your team becomes, it will need some luck to take the final step and not only play elite ball, but end up in college football’s elite setting.

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

In 2008, Virginia Tech sank to 32nd in the F/+ rankings after ranking 11th and eighth the two previous years. The Hokies still went 10-4 and still won a weak ACC despite losses to Boston College, Florida State, and Miami (and, out of conference, East Carolina); but the product itself was regressing. The Hokies scored almost 100 fewer points in 2008 than in 2007 and, despite a relatively weak ACC, allowed more, too. It was easy to assert that head coach Frank Beamer’s best days were behind him. He had made the Hokies matter, and his squad was still good enough for a shaky ACC, but Tech on a national level did not matter as much as it once did.

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

“Clemsoning” shouldn’t really be a thing. The expectations for Dabo Swinney’s Tigers shouldn’t be adjusted because, for instance, Tommy Bowden’s 2008 squad began the season (over)ranked ninth in the country and finished 7-6, or because 2011 Clemson reached No. 6 in the country before losing back-to-back games to unranked opponents on the road, or because 2000 Clemson reached fifth before losing to unranked Georgia Tech at home.

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

In 2007, Butch Davis was hired to restore pride for a program that didn’t have much. Always a basketball-first school, UNC had still experienced solid recent success, first with four straight top-20 appearances under Dick Crum in the early-1980s, then with a 21-3 run and two top-10 finishes under Mack Brown in the mid-1990s. When Brown left for Texas, however, things went south quickly. Carl Torbush won seven games in his first post-Mack season, then won nine in his next two. John Bunting took over, went 8-5 in his first year, then never again finished above .500. Bunting’s final team, in 2006, was plain awful, going 3-9 and placing 93rd in the F/+ rankings.

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

I’ve been attached to the city of Pittsburgh since I randomly (and foolishly) adopted the Pirates in the late-1980s because I loved the Bonds-Van Slyke-Bonilla outfield. I discovered the wonder that is Primanti Bros. sandwiches (and, as part of Pittsburgh initiation, got lost in the ridiculous downtown system of highways) in 1999, attended my first (and last) Pirates game at Three Rivers Stadium in 2000, knocked out trips to eight Strip District bars (and Primanti’s) in about 12 hours during a one-day visit in 2001, and attended my first Pirates game at PNC Park in 2002. The city is staid and scenic, innovative (in ways that Detroit is not) and awash in tradition. It is one of America’s most underrated cities, and to top it off, the University of Pittsburgh’s football program just scored some major points with me by naming its practice fields after the late Beano Cook. (Side note: I also love Beano Cook.)

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

I may have been a little quick on the trigger in naming Washington the most perfectly average team in the country.

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

First things first: Al Golden took the Temple job. You’re not going to scare him. After a decent five-year run as Virginia’s defensive coordinator, he looked at a program that had gone 3-31 in the last three years, had ranked dead last in the F/+ rankings in 2005, and had stunk so bad that it lost its spot in the Big East, and he thought, “Yeah, I think I can make something of that.” And then he actually did make something of that.

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

So let’s summarize every piece you’ve probably read about Georgia Tech over the last nine months:

Confused? Check out the glossary here.

We tend to think of teams as how they existed when we were 10. It doesn’t make sense when those teams aren’t good, nor does it make sense when teams that were once terrible actually manage to succeed. Syracuse football is a litmus test in this regard. Or at least, it’s an age test. If you came of age in the 1950s or 1960s, Syracuse was the stalwart eastern program, pocketing a national title in 1959, going more than two decades without a losing record, and producing ridiculous talents like Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Floyd Little, and Larry Csonka.