… With its “footprint” now larger than Bob Lanier’s, The John Swofford Expanded Whether You Like It Or Not ACC is set to kick-off its inaugral season. The Big Dollar Dozen have settled all the lawsuits, counter suits, and who gets to stand by Donna Shalala in the official Poobah photo. It’s time to get all the blue chippers out on bail and into their various uniforms representing overly aggressive ethnically insulting symbols of white male oppression and PLAY SOME FOOTBALL. Grab a deviled egg and a piece of cold fried chicken and disagree completely with Swaggy’s opinions.
Ground crews scurry to green up the various greenswards … State DOT engineers are busily scheduling 3 month construction projects to shut down key stadium ingress and egress choke points … campus police are ordering reams of citation books for parking and imbibing violators … drugged up punks in West Raleigh are loading their Saturday Afternoon specials … nubile cheerleaders are getting younger and younger … and lunatic fringe factions are practicing their traditional chants – “the media hates us and the refs hate us and Johnny Swofford hates us and ESPN hates us and Lee Corso is a jerk and our Athletics Director is a bigger idiot than your Athletics Director”. In other words, another ACC Football Season is upon us.
BobLee offers his clever and oh-so-insightful GUARANTEES of what you can expect over the next 100 days. These ten (yes, just ten today) synopsises are in no particular order.
FLORIDA STATE
… actually lost a player to “academics” for this season. The last time that happened Bobby Bowden lived in Morgantown and Tommy and Terry were breastfeeding. How can you flunk Shoplifting, Mugging, AND Girl Friend Stomping? And now the Nickname Nuts are chasing Osceola like General Jessup in 1837. … it seemed like just yesterday that “wide right” was all a “Nole fan had to worry about. … they still have to worry about “wide right” but for the second year in a row, they will know by the first week of September if “wait’ll next year” will be their war chant again in ’05. … FSU vs Miami on Sept 5.
In the bad boy linebacker contest, FSU will start two to Miami’s one but Cane Super Felon Willie Williams with 13 arrests before he was old enough to be incarcerated in Big Boy Jail is formidable. Two untested QBs replace Wyatt Sexton whose Lyme Disease Deification this summer was bizarre even by Tallahassee standards.
A 7th straight loss to Miami could send FSU into a death spiral. Playing for Peach Bowl table scraps ain’t the Seminole way. BobLee predicts 3 losses in the ACC for Papa B. Sorry Bethie but the glory days are over.
WAKE FOREST
… will still lead the ACC in “our coach is the best coach with a losing record in The Triad” stories. The If Jim Grobe Can’t Win Here Nobody Can Society will endure another Fall of near misses and chop block accusations. Ron Wellman petitioned the ACC to limit games to 3 ½ quarters but his request was denied. Those last 10 minutes seem to always spell tears for Deacons. Wellman then asked to play Boston College six times a year to insure bowl eligibility but he was rejected on that one too. Damn that Johnny Swofford.
Boston College can’t beat Wake but can beat Notre Dame and UNC. Compare BC and Wake as institutions … amazingly alike. I love Grobe like everyone else does but how come Tom O’Brien has built a winning program under quite similar “restrictions”?
The Deacs WILL finally get a few good bounces in the final minutes this year and will win 4 ACC games.
CLEMSON
… has pretty much slipped off the front page of schools to watch. Tommy frustrates the Death Valley loonies by doing “jeeeest enuff” to keep his job. Now he’s got another “legend” to battle just down the road and this one gave his daddy plenty of trouble. With neither Mike O’Cain nor Darrell Moody to blame this year, this could be curtains for Tommy.
The annual “Bring Back Danny Ford” chant might be heard on the shores of Lake Hartwell by October 1. That’s a bad sign for Tommy. He will upset somebody but lose at least two he shouldn’t. The Tommy Deathwatch will begin in mid-October.
MARYLAND
… dropped off the table in ’04 like a Bert Blyleven curveball. The “Fat Ralph is a fat fluke” loonies were finally right after 4 years of being wrong. The wail of “he’s winning with Vanderlenden players” is now officially banned in Byrd Stadium.
The 10 win seasons are a thing of the past for the ACC’s most obscene fan base unless you want to combine Ralph and Joe Gibbs totals. Ralph should out-win Joe in ’05 and settle into ACC mediocrity. Byrd Stadium will still lead the ACC in F-bombs and general punkness.
VIRGINIA TECH
…lost three games in ’04 … Southern Cal, NC State, and Auburn. Those three teams had a combined loss total of ever how many NC State lost (It was 6. Of course I know that! EVERY Tar Heel knows that) They came within a gnat’s eyelash of two more losses to Carolina and Wake. How good are the Hokies? Better than pretty much anybody else in the ACC according to the pundits.
Like Clifton Flowers up on Wolverton Mountain, Ol’ Frank just hides up in Blacksburg and reloads every season. Other than paranoid Wahoos with binoculars, nobody really knows much about what goes on up there. He reaps rich harvests from the fertile fields of Tidewater Virginia and lets’em ply their mischief so long as they kick butt on Saturdays.
Unlike Papa Bowden, Frank keeps his staff intact with those Dickie Bonus Bucks he extorted from Jim Weaver back in 2001. Speaking of Weaver … I still can’t believe Hokie Jim when he says Weaver would lose to Dickie in a charisma contest. That’s freakin’ cold, Jim.
The nation will be watching FSU v Miami on September 4 … but the key game in the ACC might be the day before in Carter-Finley. The Pack squeaked by up at Lane last year … but as Tar Heels well know … “a squeaker looks just like a rout in the Win column”. That Sept 4 encounter is too close to call … could a Wuffie rookie running back named “AndreToney” become a legend in one game?
BOSTON COLLEGE
… is just too far away for Tobacco Road fans to know or care about. Obviously they have a solid program but who knows or cares. They wore down Carolina in the Tire Bowl but that was as much UNC seniors “running out of want to” as it was BC’s prowess. O’Brien can’t beat Grobe but he can beat anyone else on a given Saturday. I have the Eagles in the top 3 of the ACC in November with or without Doug Flutie or Johnny Damon or Gino Cappeletti or whoever the hell plays for them.
Regardless of how the Wuffs do against VaTech in September … the Wuffs will fall to the Eagles at Chestnut Hill in November. I gotta give the Wuff loonies something to be all constipated about.
BC fans don’t travel well so it will be interesting to see how the rest of the league learns to hate them. Having your fans ridiculed and described as “classless jerks” is a required rite of passage in the ACC. EVERY fan base is “a bunch of jerks” except (fill in your team’s name here).
GEORGIA TECH
… is an enigma. Bobby Dodd, John Heisman, Bobby Ross, George O’Leary and “Chan Gailey”. They have never named a hot dog for Chan at The Varsity and likely never will. Poor Chan is one of those nice guys who has dedicated his life to football but lacks the pizzazz to be a successful head coach. I’m sure he’s a fine husband, father, and would make a darn fine president of the Alpharetta Rotary Club but that won’t keep him employed on The Flats in 2006.
He might beat Auburn on Sept 3rd and win a few others he shouldn’t but in the end the Wrecks will Ramble to a mediocre 5-6 Ws and lose to da Dawgs again. He can’t make a living just beating NC State every year. Smiling Jon Tenuta will move to NFL Europe and be Defensive Coordinator for the Bader Meinhoff Gang.
MIAMI
… fell well short of their spoiled fans expectations last year. Cane fans are like Atlanta Brave “faithful” … they show up for BCS Championships and World Series’. Too bad Hurricanes is not an Indian tribe. Donna Shalala could delight her academic loonie pals by changing the name to the Coral Gables Convicts With That Funny U on Their Helmets.
I’m picking the Canes to hang #7 on the Noles on Sept 5 just because it is so improbable. The last five were improbable too. Mack Brown and Bobby Bowden need to switch up. Mack can trade Oklahoma to Bobby for Miami.
To inspire freshman linebacker Willie “Super Felon” Williams, Larry Coker has his scout squad dressed as lobsters and “campus hostesses”. Willie is kicking butt.
VIRGINIA
… looked like a combination of the Packers & Steelers juggernaut teams last September at the Scott Stadium massacre of the Tar Heels. If that had been a fight, the ref would have called it in the first three minutes. Mizzus Swagger summed that one up “why are our little boys playing those MEN?” … OUCH!
Alas, Algroh folded around Columbus Day … as the leaves began to fall so did the Hoos. Interesting parallels in Charlottesville and Raleigh … gloat starved fans bought into the BCS Bound bombast but ain’t seeing Bourbon Street or Pasadena … Hoos call Boise a “reward”.
Algroh does not come across as a man to suffer nagging and bitching alums very well. He better beat the Hokies this year or George Welsh’s expressed desire to “get back into coaching” might generate some really nasty message board meltdowns.
DUKE
… God luv’em, keeps bringing in 2-3 “highly rated” recruits in Football each year. 2 or 3 ???… heck, The Profane Polish Prince brings in 6-7 for Basketball. An All American QB is a freshman at Duke this Fall but will be wearing baggy shorts and playing next door in Cameron.
The most encouraging word from Duke is that they have discarded those totally illegible jersey numbers … black #s on navy jersies … that fashion breakthrough joins corfam shoes and mood rings in the Hall of Shame. Supposedly the players kinda liked the anonymity of the unreadable numbers … that’s a bad sign for your program.
Ted Roof fired his Offensive Coordinator … a personnel move with all the impact of Mussolini replacing the Admiral of the Italian navy.
If Duke fans ever figure out that Boston College has built a solid FB program in a not-dissimilar non-football conducive situation, it could get nasty in West Derm. Not as nasty as a Coach K sideline sermon, but nasty.
Duke will have 3 Ws by late October. If there is no God in Blue Heaven and somehow Carolina is 0-3 on September 25, the Blue Devils could get a fourth feasting on bleached bones in Kenan in mid-November. But THERE IS A GOD and that won’t happen … will it?
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Yes, we’ve left out two teams. I learned this literary trick from Hokie Jim. Whenever BobLee does a column on a subject that falls within the limited interest range of Al Bundy and his pals on the message boards, a few 1,000 extra hits are assured. We’ll taunt those loonies by delaying our Wolfpack and Tar Heel predictions til next time.
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Swagger’s Stumper
To be “in vogue” with the NCAA in honoring Indians
Why is a horse named Commanche famous?
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Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico was actually named in honor of the TV game show. It was originally Hot Springs, New Mexico named for Paris Hilton’s bedroom. Not really … that last part was a joke!
From the “Be careful what you ask for” Department … we begged for an end of the Larry Brown Saga … and now we have “T.O.” … Pharoah, please release the children of Israel. I can’t stand any more of these plagues … ARRRGGHH!
Go ahead and forward this one to your pals at the other schools. Get’em signed up here before the season starts. Just hit the “Tell A Friend” link right down below here. If you can’t find it just e-mail …
