Patience is a virtue

By my calculations, the ACC had 51 players selected in this weekend’s NFL Draft. If we don’t include Duke, then the ACC had 51 players selected in this weekend’s NFL Draft.

(To be fair to Duke … well, actually, writing that Duke stinks in football is pretty fair, even Ted Roof would probably agree. But to perhaps make Duke feel a little better, North Carolina and Wake Forest each had just one player picked, and neither of those selections happened until the seventh round. No wonder basketball can’t come soon enough every year for those on Tobacco Road.)

Of course, on Saturday, the ACC had a banner day with 12 players being taken in the first round, a record for one conference. The top pick overall also belonged to the conference, though no one outside of the Houston Texans themselves and Mario Williams seems happy about it.

It can be argued what all of this means. After all, while all those players were being selected, college football experts were busy predicting doom and gloom for the ACC. One preseason-poll (or, at this point of the year, should that be pre-preseason poll?) didn’t have a single ACC team in the Top 10.

Maybe, as Chris Graham has pointed out at this very site, the conference is just too strong from top to bottom. While the teams are busy beating each other up, teams in weaker conferences like the Pac 10 and Big 12 have a much easier road to the national title game. Therefore, until the powers-that-be in college football wise up and create a true playoff system, the ACC will suffer.

Or perhaps it just means that, even though there is a lot of talent in the conference, the coaches aren’t up to snuff. You can have talented players and still not perform well on the field if the Xs and Os aren’t called correctly.

Or maybe it’s just a fluke. A lot of very good players came out this year, but we shouldn’t expect that to happen every year, or even every other year.

I’ll walk the fence on this one. It’s too early to figure it all out yet.

Maybe John Swofford’s move to bring in Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College will never be a boost to football and will end up hurting basketball down the road.

Or maybe both of the major sports will flourish because of the addition of those three schools.

The conference has completed one season with a full 12-team league. Before we rush to judgment one way or the other, let’s just be patient.

- Patrick Hite