*This is a two part series in our continuing efforts to let the fan's voices be heard. By the fans, for the fans.
Introduction and descent into the maelstrom.
By Vespula
Since I am older than Chrisishokie and since FSUTampaGuy already calls me Mom, I decided to write my take on the ACC in football. And while I’m at it, I’ll just add my predictions for the season as well.
There is no conference in the BCS with the same quality badge of snobbery as the ACC, unless you count the PAC 101112, who haven’t even figured out yet that their name is totally Wrong! because they probably asked some Nebraska, corn-picking mothershucker, who named the Big 101112 and who doesn’t even know that is a digital language, much less that you can’t write “2” in base 2.
There was no point in asking the defacto Big 10 because they named themselves after the 12 toes they inherited from mama-sister and their uncle-brother-daddy. The ACC doesn’t number itself. It boasts about SAT scores and the amount of money mummsy and dadsy pay to send Biff and Muffy to school to learn things they will never use the rest of their lives for a very, very high price!
Welcome to Vespula’s review of her own home conference.
The ACC 2010: The Snob Report
There are two divisions in the Atlantic Coast Conference. One is the Atlantic Division. The other is the Coastal Division. Since Atlantic comes first in Atlantic Coast Conference, I won’t start with Coastal.
ATLANTIC DIVISION
While distinctly ACC in affiliation, the Atlantic Division is the “almost, but not quite really” snob division of the conference. One tolerates them for their nouveau riche contributions to the financial well being of the family. (Sniff de hauté!)
Boston College – Snobbery in America was born in Boston. They still think the Mayflower came here with English settlers before any other people arrived. And, after all, if they weren’t English, they weren’t people like their people, so they didn’t count. And speaking of counting, they forgot that the English were already here in Jamestown drinking beer and making babies 20 years before those Pilgrims made sex illegal in America, and generations of young people have wondered how it is done since.
Ya get in the saddle and shoot, pilgrim.
Boston College is in Boston. It is not Harvard. It is not MIT. It’s…the okay Boston college.
Boston College has a great tradition in football: They hurt their own fans. Every year, loyal BC fans cheer for their team to rise to greatness above the grit-soaked masses to their south, only to find that a little too much clam chowder and Sam Adams has made them too slow to score, even though their caloric conglomerate on the defensive front line has held down the scoreboard summarizations of the opponent. This will be another year of the same. Hard-fought 10-3 losses can be moral victories…if you still think Jack Kennedy was too nice a Catholic boy to have ever cheated with Marilyn Monroe.
Clemson - Clemson fits the ACC just like Vanderbilt was made for the SEC. This is a place that is proud of its football, only has basketball because it’s required in the conference, and is very proud of its roots. They often touch them up. In fact, they are a top 65 university in the nation, and would be higher if South Carolina put more money into learning and less into adultery.
They once won a national championship and beat the Nebraska Osbornes to do it.
How the bludy fook did tha’ ‘appen?
You can still see people displaying those auto license plates “Clemson. 19fadedfaded National Champs” around the upstate of South Carolina. But this will not be the year it happens again. As much as the Clemson faithful long for the days of Danny Ford to be here again http://www.brownielocks.com/dannyboysong.html, there is no use crying over Spiller milk; and if Kyle is in a Denver Parka this Fall, only the Clemson defense will answer the challenges. The beautiful purple mountains of the Carolina Blue Ridge will look down in love at their favored child of the lake, but the orange sun will set across Hartwell by November this year.
Florida State – Also known as Free Shoe U, Florida State entered the ACC in 1992 and began to tear the place apart.
Dad flabbin’ gosh dangin’ injuns!
First established as a seminary, this institution became the Florida State College in 1901 and then underwent group gender change to become a women’s school. It soon became the largest college in Florida, thus affirming that women in the Deep South are smarter than men.
Florida State’s claim to ACC snobbery is powerful! They pulled the assignment of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory away from MIT in 1990. The Cambridge Yankees protested, but both the Bush 1 and Clinton versions of NSF told MIT STFU about FSU.
Biff and Muffy are impressed!
FSU has adopted a Native American tribe as their name after numerous other institutions looked at them and said “a-woo-woo!” Historically, the tribe they picked – the Seminoles – came from Creek Indian rejects from Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and escaped slaves from South Carolina. This makes them both disgusting and infuriating to opponents.
The Seminoles are entering their first year of football since 1976 without King Bobby of Bowden. Bowden’s contemporaries included Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, Darryl Royal, Dan Devine, John Robinson and Joe Paterno. He outlasted all but Paterno, who is now making God sweat as the oldest coach in history. Florida State will now be directed by Jimbo Fisher, who is already unsuccessful as a Fisher because there is no one named Jimbo on the FSU roster. The Seminoles hope to recapture the glory of the earlier Bowden years in Fisher’s first season, and lay great hopes upon the shoulders of Christian Ponder. But as much as one may ponder, while the Seminole faithful grow fonder, when asked, there’s many’a responder, this season the Indians will wander.
Maryland –Maryland is an old state. It is a thin state. Maryland’s head coach is not in that state. Maryland lays strong claim to snobbery in the ACC. It’s not the best university; it’s not the best football team, basketball team or swim team. But Maryland has a great claim to snobbery. It really has crabs! It’s one thing you can count on. When you go to Maryland, you’re going to get crabs! The soup has crabs, the salads have crabs, they even put crabs in their cakes there. It’s the most crab infested place in America!
Holy shit! I’m full of crabs!
Maryland was established as a colony for Catholics when America was starting out. That was not because people were being nice and saying, “Hey, we’re all about freedom and choice and being what you want here.” No, it was because of those Pilgrims again because they knew Catholics were having sex, even though it was illegal here, and they wanted them down in Maryland, just in case a Puritan got tempted. They could have gotten crabs!
Maryland is no longer devoutly Catholic. There is too much of Washington, DC that’s rubbed itself all over Maryland for that. But no amount of papal intercessions or Hail Mary’s will change their fate this year. 2010 will be a lean year for the Terps, if not for their coach, and Friedgen will overstay his welcome in Fat City.
NC State – North Carolina State has one claim to ACC snobbery. It has the largest school for textiles in the Western Hemisphere. More lintheads have floated out of State into cotton mills than from any other school in America and more than from a number of the others combined. In fact, they had the first cloning machine in the world at NC State. Every NC State grad you ever met from its glory years with 1200 lintheads in one college at once…..all looked exactly the same.
Geoh, weoowfpak!
The Wolfpack men traditionally have a similar look.
NC State is not exactly a perennial football power. They haven’t been a basketball power since John Travolta was thin, young and a girl’s wet dream. This year they threaten to change all that. Unfortunately, when you threaten someone, you have to back it up or they will have your backside up. Happy 2010, girls!
Wake Forest – What can you say about a small, private, Baptist college with an enrollment size that would embarrass a lot of FCS teams, and whose name sounds like a Wiccan Beltane ritual?
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that’s what. This one ranks way up on the snob list. Not only because they have more hymens and dry glanses than any other school in the Research Triangle, but because they actually screen their applicants and test them like a mullah doing a pelvic. This is a school, and no one forgets that. And they are crazy. Why else would Baptists be happy with Day-mon (ah!) Deee-cons (sssah!) ?
They are great at basketball, the only religious event on Tobacco Road stronger than a Billy Graham Crusade re-run, and they have earned ego-bruising respect in football.
The football team of this little school was taken under the command of one Jim Grobe and it turned into the Mighty Mouse of college football half a decade ago.
Jim Grobe bubbles with delight as he comes to save the day!
Unfortunately, he has been coming to save the day lately about as often as Andy Kaufman lip-synced the words of the song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C570byQCLpI
This year will see the usual stunning upsets and hurt feelings of mighty power wannabe’s at the hands of the Demon Deacons. It will also see the Deacons fall from grace and backslide to the bottom of the Atlantic until they are buoyed by the mighty belly of Moby Ralph, the demi-god of the lowest depths of The Atlantic.
ACC Atlantic Prediction:
1- FSU
2- Clemson (without Parker)
3- Boston College
4- NC State
5- Wake Forest
6- Maryland
If Parker stays, I predict a shootout with CU taking the Atlantic in a 1 to 3 point game against FSU.