Amidst the changing and expanding landscape of college conferences, many improved upon what they were previously; however, it appears that the ACC has gotten worse, much worse. The two major powers in football are the SEC and the Big Ten. The SEC took the two presumptive top programs in the Big 12 and the Big Ten took in a few Pac-12 programs. The interesting thing is that no schools departed from the ACC. All they did was add teams, yet they are still the worst conference in the two major sports. “The ACC definitely got worse from expansion. They added three horrible schools.” – Carter Dralle (10)

The additions the ACC made were Standford, Cal, and SMU. The best of those were SMU, who made the college football playoff and is having an okay year in basketball. However, in football they had the 41^st best strength of schedule and got destroyed by Penn State in the first round of the playoffs. Stanford and Cal have been bad at football and basketball for years now.

The Big 12 has statistically been the best basketball conference in the country for the past ten years and a lot of their additions reflect that. Houston, Arizona, and Cincinnati (three of their eight additions) are all very good basketball programs. The Big 12 made moves that greatly improved their best sport and slightly improved their football. The ACC did not. They made panicked additions that didn’t improve their conference whatsoever because everyone else was making moves and they were late to the party. The result is a watered-down product. Even the schools that were already in the ACC have regressed. Both of their college football playoff entries got beaten in the first round by two touchdowns or more. Duke and Louisville are their only two ranked teams in basketball. Duke is one of the best teams in the country as always, but Louisville is currently #25. Even North Carolina, who is one of the blue bloods of college basketball, is having a really rough season.

A good representation of how disappointing the ACC has been is the basketball SEC/ACC challenge in which they lost 14-2. “In basketball and football, the ACC doesn’t compare to the SEC, it’s not even close.” – Carter Dralle (10)