Charles Bloom is a straight shooter who’s long worked for or within the SEC. He’s watched as the older conference struggled to widen its reach beyond the traditional grasp of Kentucky, and to quit running afoul of NCAA regulations. (Not that long ago the majority of the SEC’s teams were on probation.)
Bloom also witnessed the SEC’s emergence as arguably football’s preeminent power, a lucrative trait for attracting TV revenue, even as the ACC slipped from a similar if less gaudily lucrative position
as arguably the nation’s top men’s basketball conference.
Last year the ACC’s slip became a slide, shockingly illustrated both by the SEC’s 14-2 edge in the leagues’ annual challenge series and by the paucity of ACC teams invited to the NCAA tournament –four compared to 14 from the SEC.
The ACC’s downturn, widely dissected and discussed, was met with a decision to pare down its intraleague schedule from 20 games to 18. Presumably that gives ACC programs an additional two-game avenue to indulge their ambitions and be bettered positioned for NCAA inclusion.
(Not that everyone will take advantage of the opportunity. Georgia Tech, for one, is not. Of 13 pre-ACC opponents, coach Damon Stoudamire scheduled nine that stood 208 or worse among 364 teams in last year’s NET rankings.)
“In my wildest dreams did I ever think that the ACC would cut back on the number of conference games, because it might hurt their RPI or NET,” said Bloom, now at South Carolina, which departed the ACC in 1971. “I’m still of the age where the world stops for ACC basketball.”
Barely four NCAA tournaments ago, the ACC’s men hit a rarely-equaled peak: Virginia won the 2019 NCAA title, four league teams crowded the Sweet 16, three were top seeds (Duke among them). The ACC Network soon launched, but long after the Big Ten and SEC. And then a slip became a slide – at least in popular estimation.
Yet, let’s not get carried away. Things aren’t as bad as they seem, not as a chronic condition, as convention insists. Even as, in the seeming blink of an eye, the ACC bid adieu to three Hall of Fame basketball coaches and six men overall who held school records for career wins; and further diluted its strength by adding three programs that haven’t made significant marks in the modern game; by some measures it remains in the running for the best league.
The results are telling if you judge, let’s say, by success in the NCAA tournament, where the competitive playing field is approximately level.
Over the past 10 seasons in which the tournament was played –2020, the Covid-19 year, was fallow — ACC teams have won three national titles (2015, 2017, 2019), made 10 appearances in the Final Four, and 11 in the regional finals. Not exactly falling by the wayside.
Five different ACC teams got to a Final Four in the past decade. Eight reached regional finals, 13 got to the Sweet 16. We’ll soon see if last year was the nadir or a signpost on a road to the status of ACC football.
| NOW AND THEN ACC Showings In Recent NCAA Tournaments (Non-ACC Teams In Italics, Listed By Farthest Advance) |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season | Champ | Final 4 | Final 8 | Sweet 16 | In | 1Seed |
| 2025 | Florida | Duke | x | x | 5 | 1 |
| 2024 | UConn | NC State | Duke | Clemson | 5 | 1 |
| 2023 | UConn | Miami | NS | Pitt | 5 | 0 |
| 2022 | Kansas | UNC, Duke | Miami | ND | 5 | 0 |
| 2021 | Baylor | x | x | FS, SU | 7 | 0 |
| 2020 | No NCAA Tournament | |||||
| 2019 | Virginia | x | Duke | FS, NC, VT | 7 | 3 |
| 2018 | Villanova | x | D,FS,SU | C | 9 | 1 |
| 2017 | UNC | x | x | x | 9 | 1 |
| 2016 | Villanova | UNC, SU | ND, V | D, UM | 7 | 2 |
| 2015 | Duke | x | UL, ND | NC, NS | 6 | 1 |
