What did Florida State do to the ACC as a league?

All week long we've been doing the best era of individual schools. NC State on Monday, Carolina on Tuesday. Yesterday we did East Carolina.

That was a fun conversation with Steve Logan. We have two coming up today, but why not also, because there's some other things to talk about, why not also talk about best era for ACC football? Is it possible that in the sort of roundabout way we're in it right now, in spite of all the shade the ACC has had thrown at it? David Teal, Mr. Soar Stuff, Richmond Times joining us on the Adam Gold Show. I'll see you in 12 days at ACC Football Media Day, but I couldn't wait.

I missed you, Dave. Now when I asked you, I was surprised at the answer. So tell me what you think the ACC's best era is. Adam, I don't think we're in it because when we were 22, the league missed the CFP.

Right. But if you back it off just a couple of years from 2013 through 2020, that's an eight-season stretch. The ACC wins three Natties, two by Clemson, one by Florida State. They win two Heisman's, Lamar Jackson and Jamis Winston.

They have Aaron Donald in the league, pretty fair player. They're in the CFP every year of its existence up till then. And oh, by the way, in 2020, they had two teams. Right. CFP with Clemson and Notre Dame.

You make a very strong argument. The only counter I have to that, David Teal joining us here on the Adam Gold Show, is that in those years, it really seems to me, my recall is that the league was a one-trick pony. Right. There wasn't a competition for Florida State in 13. That Duke might've been the biggest competition for Florida State that year. And since Clemson's reign began, there doesn't seem to have been real, I mean, they've struggled in a game or two, but it wasn't a fight for them really to win their division or to win the leagues.

And that is my only counter to that. But in terms of overall success, yeah. I mean, facts are facts. Florida State, Clemson, Clemson, and Clemson and Alabama had what a four-year run of Epic Games.

Yes, they did. And Adam, I think on top of that, if the ACC doesn't have that success early on, there is no ACC network. Yeah, true. That's why I believe 2013 Florida State team, while it may be the best team in league history, if it's not, it's the most important team in league history because it ended a stretch of more than a decade that the ACC did not have a single team in the final top five of the AP poll. It was the football dark ages for this league and Florida State dragged the league out of them. David Teel is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show, Richmond Times, and we will all be in Charlotte, ACC football kickoff coming up in 12 days.

I don't want to belabor the topic, but I am just curious your thoughts. The commissioner, Jim Phillips, I think we both agree is an incredibly nice man. Maybe he might be a little bit too married to the past of the way college football has worked, but I'm sure he'll work through that too. But he also was the former AD at Northwestern when the commissioner's forum is opened up to questions. I mean, is it going to be a race to ask him about Northwestern? Certainly someone will, whether it will be a race, I don't know, unless Adam, he addresses this before then, which would be my advice.

Yeah. No, it would be because why do you want that subject lingering when you're trying to kick off your football season in the 2023-24 sports calendar? I haven't read every story about the Northwestern football and baseball situations, but I have read the student papers accounts and there is one young man who went on the record, you know, with his name, a former offensive lineman who is a Latino and he alleged a racist atmosphere, racial overtones in the locker room. And his senior year would have been Jim Phillips' first football season as Northwestern's AD. That's the one overlap I have seen. And what is unclear to me from those stories is whether that young man took his concerns to any administrators, including Mr. Phillips.

They did. David Teel is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. Yeah, look, I mean, I think that maybe the easiest way to ask him the question, ask a question about it is, how would you handle that as AD? As commissioner, if it comes up, if we have inklings, like, that there is a program in the league like that, how would you handle it?

It's obviously, these are uncomfortable conversations. I'm sure Jim will handle the question, but I have a hard time believing that Pat Fitzgerald had no idea what was going on. I just, I can't close my mind because that runs antithetical to what we know about college coaches. They have a way of putting a protective barrier in between those things and them, but that doesn't mean they don't know. And Adam, here's my question for Northwestern, because you can, it's a stretch, but you can make the argument or make the case that the CEO, the head coach, may not know everything that goes on, but by God, the assistant coaches, the boots on the ground, they know, and yet you fire Pat Fitzgerald and you're retaining his staff?

How does that work? It's a very good point. Well, there's a lot of room in between a two-week unpaid summer vacation and outright firing, and we got there with no new information in two days. So I am curious how all of that also happened. Final question for you, David, too, and I appreciate your time, and I actually saw this. I'm completely transparent. I ripped it right off of ESPN's, like, Chiron at the bottom of the screen on one of their silly morning shows.

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Savings off sale and clearance prices. Exclusions apply. That would be my immediate reaction. Has adding Maryland and Rutgers made the Big 10 better? No.

Has it made it richer? Yeah. Right. Well, here's, here, because I think you're, the way you phrased it is exactly right.

I think there are two answers and I'm not sure they're both correct. It all depends on your definition of better or good. Has it been good for college football, college athletics? And financially speaking, it's been amazing, right? And, and in some ways that financial, you know, that windfall in some ways has been great for college football and college athletics and certainly coaches and salaries, but also awareness. But it does coincide with the explosion in popularity of college sports. And we can, I mean, I think you and I would probably agree that it's probably not related except that we don't know.

No, I don't believe it is related. Adam, I'll answer your question with a question to you. Was it good when the ACC went to 14 teams and NC State and Duke played once every six years?

No, no. And I have been screaming about that forever, but I've also been screaming that we can, we can remedy that simply by doing what they're doing now, which is getting rid of divisions. But I know why we kept divisions. It was, it was, it made it easier for teams and it just happened to be the coastal. When we started this whole thing, the coastal was the better side. But it's been easier for teams in the coastal to pretend that they were great because they could win that division. I love Duke, right? I mean, Duke wasn't the second best team in the ACC that year.

I mean, they might've been, but probably says more about the ACC. So yeah, we're going to talk about all these things, but maybe we'll talk actual football and the emergence of Florida, re-emergence of Florida State. Now we could be getting into an era of ACC football. If Florida State really comes back, if Jeff Brom gets Louisville going, if Mack Brown can do something sustained at UNC, we might, we might be talking about a good era, really good era of ACC football. We need it. Yeah, Adam, it's funny you mentioned Louisville.

I like to look at schedules and such. Louisville does not play this season, Florida State, Clemson, or North Carolina, which are the consensus top three teams in the league. Can the Cardinals parlay that schedule good fortune into kind of a sneaky good season? Yeah. Sometimes look, we've experienced that in the NFL forever.

Sometimes the schedule helps you out and maybe the schedule will help Louisville out. David, thank you very much. Safe trip to Charlotte. I'll see you in 12 days. Look forward to it, Adam. Thank you. You got it.