Speaker 1: Hello, welcome to this Week in the Atlantic Coast Conference,
the podcast for All Sports Discussion dot Com. This is
Jeff and you can follow me on Twitter X at
talking a c C Sports. That's at t A l
K I N A c C S p O r
T S. Your podcast moderator is Matthew and you can
follow him on Twitter at All Sports d A c C.
That's at A L L S P O r T
S d A c C. Matthew, I'm going to turn
it over to you now as we wait for our
guests to join us.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I just got We just got a message
from him from Sam in our document and it looks
like he doesn't have a method to log in or
a link or something like that. Jeff, maybe you can work,
Maybe you can work with him, because he doesn't have
he doesn't have, he doesn't have, he doesn't have something.
Is it in the invite or something like that. Maybe
you can maybe you can help him out here. And
I'll introduce here, Uh, I'll introduce the I'll introduce what
we got going on here tonight. Ah. So, welcome back
to this Week in the ACC. This is the podcast
of All Sports Discussion dot Com. This is the longest
running independent acc podcast in the country, and tonight we
have a brand new guest and that guest is Sam
Jesse and he is here from Suns of Saturday and
you can follow him on Twitter. It at Sam of
Saturday again. That's at Sam of Saturday. He's a certified
analytics STARM. He actually calls himself that he's the code
the co host of the Too Deep Hokies podcast. Again,
that's at Too Deep at two d E E p
VT Hokies podcast. This is the that is the longest
running hokies podcast in the country. And he's the website
content manager for suns of Saturday again for Suns of Saturday,
which is a very Virginia Tech athletics focused website, and
he's a Virginia Tech alumnus times too. Jeff, I think
we may have to restart the podcast here because I
up all that I see somebody joining the room here, Jeff,
Do you see is Sam here with us? And Sam
you're lying? Is that you with us?
Speaker 3: See? Guys? How y'all doing? Man?
Speaker 2: I think I introduced you. Did you hear me talking?
Speaker 1: I just did? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Awesome, awesome, So man, tell me more about you This
is a good opportunity for you now to turn it
for me to turn it over to you. Tell us
about yourself, Sam. I know I gave you the brief
introduction about where you're at with Sons of Saturday, where
to follow you on Twitter? Yeah, just go an opportunity
for you to tell us about yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, funny enough. That's the gist of it at this point.
So I graduated from Virginia Tech, got my master's and
did analytics. I've worked in sports betting a bit, and
so that's kind of the lane that I stick to
with my college football analysis. But yeah, with Suns of
Saturday now been about four years and we're really up
and running now and I help with the student writers
as well, who write for our website. So we had
a really cool thing going over there. Following Virginia Tech
sports obviously hasn't been the fall that we have hoped for,
but amazing time to follow college football regardless. My my
co host on College Football Monday and two Deep, Pete
Berthod We cover national game as well as just Virginia Tech.
So it's been a really fun season.
Speaker 2: So let's get right into it. Which ACC football team
was the most disappointing in Week twelve and the flip side,
who was the most impressive ACC football team.
Speaker 1: Of the week?
Speaker 3: Well, I guess we can start out with disappointing, and
it's got to be Louisville. I mean, that was a
that was a rough, rough performance there traveling to the
Farm to play Stanford. You know, coming into this season,
I think a lot of people thought Stanford and Cal
would get somebody on one of those long road trips.
But Stanford had looked so bad and Louisville's coming off
that big win against Clemson and they just absolutely collapsed
there at the end of the game. That's a really
bad loss for Jeff Brahm and that Louisville program.
Speaker 2: And flip side, who's your most impressive of AC Super
Bowl team?
Speaker 3: This is kind of one that shockingly no one's talking
about because of this school. But North Carolina they've had
a lot of stuff, very sad and unfortunate stuff happened
with injuries and you know, the death of one of
their players off the field, and I mean they've also
had Mac Brown talking like he's going to retire in
the middle of the season, and quietly they've reached Bowl eligibility.
They're playing good football, and they have games against Boston
College and North Carolina State left on the schedule. You
and see could be an eight win football team and
no one will have talked about them. Kind of ironic
considering the quarterbacks that they've had, and they've only been
able to win seven or eight games with those guys.
So North Carolina is quietly taking care of business here
second half of the season.
Speaker 2: That's an excellent response. That's an excellent response, Jeff, you're
up brand.
Speaker 1: Right, Thank you. Matthew Sam. Which ACC football game are
you looking forward to the most in week thirteen? Can
you believe that Week thirteen it absolutely.
Speaker 3: Flies by man a little bit of homersm but maybe not.
I kind of have to say Virginia Tech traveling to
Duke in primetime because is it a big game for
the ACC standings? No, but are we in like win
or go home mode for Brent Prye. I don't know
if we're there yet, but we're getting pretty darn close.
And the fact that you have a football program this stature,
that is at the point in year three where Virginia
Tech is now, there's gonna be a lot of eyeballs
on that game and Tech needs a win. And I
think that is just really really fascinating from a national perspective,
because this is a game coming into the season that
pretty much everybody sharpened in as a w for Virginia Tech,
and now all of a sudden, it's going to be
a real tight game on the road at night, and
you're not playing very good football and your team's really
beat up. So it'll be a really interesting matchup for
the Hokies, especially going up against that Manny Diaz coached
Duke defense.
Speaker 1: All Right, which acc team do you think could be
on upset alert in Week thirteen if they're looking ahead
to a game on their schedule or otherwise just sleepwalking
on the field.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I I this one pains me to say, but
SMU traveling to Virginia on what is going to be
probably a chilly day after SMU, I think kind of
feels like they almost have this thing wrapped up. UVA
is not a very good football team, but they're good enough.
And I think that's the reason the UVA always tends
to pull one or two of these upsets of year
is because teams kind of sleepwalk against them and I'm
a little worried for SMU. They did not look good
when they traveled to the East Coast to play Duke.
They had a ton of turnovers in that game, so
we'll see what they look like. And another one that's
really off the radar, Yukon is traveling to Syracuse. Yukon
is seven and three and they are playing really good football.
And that Syracuse team, they're coming back from a long
road trip. They've been really wishy washy all year. Would
not be surprised if the Huskies keep that one as
a game in the Dome.
Speaker 1: All right, A good couple choices there. Let's step out
of the acc for a bid here. Which national FBS
game are you looking forward to to most in week thirteen?
And we're wide open with this question. This can be
Power four, G five. You can go with an FCS
matchup and then give us the winner of your game
or two that you're looking at nationally.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll be boring and just pick the obvious top
five matchup of Ohio State and Indiana, which everybody saw
coming at the beginning of the year. But I just
think that is going to be a really fascinating game
in Columbus. I think I like Ohio State to pull
that one out. I mean, and the reason I'm saying
that is because there's starting to be a lot of
film on this Indiana team, and I think you saw
that when they played against Michigan and they played against
a higher caliber of athlete who also had some film
study on them, and they kind of stifled that offense
a bit. Now they're going to play a much better
team in a more hostile environment. I just think that
this might be the time where it catches up with
Indiana and then we're a go Army beat Navy household.
So we will be pulling hard for the Black Knights.
As they played Notre Dame this weekend, that is going
to be a fascinating game. Unfortunately, I feel like Notre
Dame has the upper hand. They've played the triple option
a lot the past few years and they've played really
well against it every year, So I think I like
Notre Dame in that matchup. But it's gonna be a
really cool game, and if Army pulls off the upset,
that absolutely throws a wrench into the College Football Playoff
Committee's plans because it would be really hard to leave
out an undefeated army where the neutral site win against
Notre Dame.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, Sam, We have the next couple segments here.
This is kind of a new one. We've had open
mic portions of our podcast in the past, but we've
kind of opened it up here to have this one
particular open mic section just for you. What do you
have out there? What topics you want to hit on
a and it can go anywhere. You can talk about basketball,
if you want college basketball seasons getting going, you can
go back to football officiating, you know, whatever you want
to hit I'm turn it over to you now.
Speaker 3: Well, shoot, I could talk about officiating. The ACC is
given us plenty of material for officiating this season. You know,
I think the big story for me on a very
macro level as we start to wrap up this season
is the really large conferences, These sixteen seventeen, eighteen team conferences,
they don't really work. And like if you look at
the championship game scenarios for all of these conferences, they're
an absolute mess. And a lot of these teams aren't
even playing each other in the regular season, so you'll
have some teams who just won't get a shot at
the team who ends up winning the title, or you know,
because of their schedule draw or at a huge disadvantage
compared to other teams. And I think in the ACC
when I do my model every preseason, running through the season,
I had SMU as having the easiest schedule of any
Power four team, and that has roughly held up. I mean,
the BYU game was pretty tough, but their conference schedule
was abou as easy as you could ask for, and
they're utilizing that this year. And credit to them, but
you know, are they actually not much better than Miami
or Clemson. I don't know. I think they're pretty good.
But you're kind of seeing these things happen throughout college football.
I mean the Big Ten, there was a scenario a
couple of weeks ago where like undefeated organ wouldn't make
the Big Ten title game if Indiana and Penn State
won out. That's just ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense
there anybody. So I don't know if they're going to
have to like rethink how they do the conference championships,
or even if they're gonna have to just say, hey,
you know, screw it, We'll just not even have the
championship games. I don't really know what they do, but
it is just wild and wacky. I'll know what you
guys have thought about it, but it's been really tough
to keep up with, even for someone like myself who
lives and breathes college football.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, hmm, I think that. Yeah, the conferences
have gotten so big, you know that it definitely has
taken away the ability to evaluate teams. I mean, maybe Indiana,
you know, shocks the world and beats Ohio State, But
I mean how they've managed to go through their schedule
and you know, avoid Oregon and Penn State and not
to have to play you know, another P four team
out of conference. You know, should that be evaluated as fairly?
And I cannot believe I'm going to say this, but
in the same way that Georgia is, who you know,
started the year with a Clemson, finishes a year with
Georgia Tech to P four teams, and then has a
schedule where they go onto the road to play Ole
Miss at Texas, Tennessee at home at Alabama. I mean,
how can those teams be evaluated on any level equally?
Speaker 3: And shockingly, what you miss there with Georgia is they
end the season with Georgia Tech. That's a tough game,
and so yeah, I think it is really tough to
kind of resume compare these teams because unlike college basketball,
where every team kind of plays everybody else at least
once in the conference most of the time twice, you
have a pretty good idea, college football doesn't have that
luxury right now. And I think it is kind of
throwing a wrench into our evaluation. And it's why, you know,
I'm going to submit my playoff prediction bracket here to
Pete in a few minutes. I don't know where to
rank these teams. They're all, I mean, outside of Oregon.
I have no idea who teams two through twelve should be.
Speaker 1: And so it is.
Speaker 3: It is a really crazy season. I think it's great
for the sport as a whole. It makes it very interesting.
But I think we're going to have a scenario where
there's gonna be a lot of really good teams that
get left out of the college football playoff, and there's
going to be a lot of not so great teams
that kind of stumble their way to ten or eleven
wins and end up with a chance of the national title.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's a really good A really
good point, Sam is you know, when you have the
NCAA Basketball Tournament, the really good teams are in the field.
And if you're on the bubble, you've definitely you know,
you've probably lost ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen games. And that's
why you're on the web. Well, even if you're probably
a pretty good team and you play in a great conference,
you know, a very very good team is not getting
left out under any circumstance. And with the way these
schedules have set up and with with the teams, you
now have that chance where a very good team could
get left out, maybe because they played a very difficult schedule.
And you know, there's been people who are who were
skeptical of of BYU and they lost people that were
skeptical of Miami, and then they lost a couple of
weeks ago because of the close games. People skeptical of
Indiana and they had the close game against Michigan. And
it's really hard to say, you know, how how these teams,
you know, stack up against each other. One thing I'm
positive about is if there's a six way tie in
the SEC for a six way grouping of ten and
two teams. You know, not all of those ten and
two teams are the same. That doesn't just because you
went ten and two doesn't mean they all should be
in the playoff. And you know, that's that's another thing
that's right there, sitting out on the horizon, is hearing
Greg Sankey go ballistic when a couple of those teams
get left out of the playoffs.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean you even had like Missouri
and Eli Drinkowitz before they lost to South Carolina this
week and he was saying, hey, man, we're still in it.
We're still in this thing. Like I guess technically they were,
But yeah, it does seem almost set up to favor
either playing It's set up to favor Notre Dame the SEC,
and then the team that gets the absolute luckiest schedule
draw and does not play tough non conference. And you know,
I don't want to I don't want to say Indiana
has been lucky at all. I think they've been very,
very good. But that's kind of like the perfect storm
for Indiana this year.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: That might happen to one team a year, but probably not.
It really is just set up for the ten win
SEC team and the ten win Big Ten team to
get in, and I think college football fans are just
going to have to adjust their expectations about what a
really good football team looks like. We've gotten so used
to undefeated is the goal for a national champion team,
and that's really not realistic for most programs. So maybe
it's on us as a fans to kind of readjust
our expectations about what a good team looks like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very good, fair point. All right, Matthew. I'm gonna
turn it over to you as we close out the.
Speaker 2: Podcast Sam open microphone segment too. I'm going to start
out this time with my open microphone, and I'm going
to start out with the homework question, right, and I'm
going to ask ask you a question. I am a
Virginia Tech alumnus, as you might know, and uh, I
have some questions. I have some questions for you about
Virginia Tech. But it's mostly it's really a longer scale
type of view. Because I've wrote about this at the
All Sports Discussion website. Lots of changes are going to
be happening, and it kind of reminds me of what
Louisville went through a couple a couple of years ago,
where you've got a president that's got a contract, university
president that's got a contract coming up in two and
a half years. You've got a coach that you can
correct me if I'm wrong, Sam, I believe his contract
is up. Is it twenty twenty seven? I think his
contract is up, prize contract is up, and I think
the eighties about two years after that, babcock. So you've
got that situation coming after the first game this year.
And I'm actually very sorry about serious about this. I
have this document and at all sports discussion dot com,
I mentioned that Virginia Tech ceiling. There was enough for
me in that first game to see that Virginia Tech
ceiling was going to be seven and five. That's where
I where I looked at it, because they didn't see
a whole lot of adjustments from the coaching adjustments from
the first half. And I'm wondering what your take is
there on just on really the future of the university
and athletics in football at Virginia at Virginia Tech. I
mean a lot of people have mentioned, for example, that
pribably should make some assistant coaching changes next year. Some
will say that, others are those are his you know
those are his people. I've realized I'm asking you a
big open ended question here, but.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, gosh, you know, Hokies have been thinking
about this for over a month now, and it does
feel like the athletic department as a whole has kind
of hits its plateau and maybe starting to fall off
the side with with the current athletic department leadership. It's
really really tough, though, to to go ahead and say, like,
we need to tear the ship down because we lost
a bunch of close games, right Like it's a couple
bounces here or there, and we're talking about how great
Brent Pray is and how he's resurrecting this program. So
I don't think you want to burn it all down.
But there are some issues that start at the top
with wit Babcock and the way that they kind of
dealt with Nil and the way that they've kind of
approached this new era of football that maybe wasn't totally correct,
and I think maybe they didn't hit on some of
the hires that they wanted to. And look, Virginia Tech
is just due for some assistant coaching changes, not only
because of the performance on the field, but Also, it's
just the nature of the job market for college football coaches.
They bounce around every few years, even when things are
going great. So I think that's just naturally going to happen.
It's do you make the big decisions right? Do you
look at different coordinators, do you, you know, potentially say hey,
Brent pry thinks, but no thanks and move on from
another direction there. I think these next two games are
what are going to make that decision, to be quite
honest with you, Because if Virginia Tech wins these next
two games that they should be favored in and it
goes and plays in the god forsaken Military Bowl or
something like that and wins that game, all of a sudden, it's,
you know, the message from the football program, the athletic
department is going to be, Hey, things are great. We
ended it on a win streak. We had a lot
of close losses. We're going to be better next year.
I don't know if Tech fans will be very happy
with that, but I can I can foresee that future.
So I think, like like I said, this, this game
against Duke is really big. It might not be the
difference between Tech playing in an ACC championship game or not,
but it does feel like Virginia Tech is at a
tipping point with the athletic department, especially football.
Speaker 2: Very very good answer. What do you got for us?
You get another open Mike sam.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh ah so quick, quick hitters. I'm an Oregon believer.
I placed the bet on them to win the National
title and I'm feeling pretty good about that right now. Actually,
and Ashton genty for Heisman. I understand how special Travis
Hunter is, but what Ashton Gentsy is doing is historic
on so so many levels, and I just think he
absolutely deserves it because that dude is unbelievable. And I'm
sticking by that no matter how many interceptions get Travis
Hunter gets. I'm saying with Ashton, Jenny Forer Heisman in
Oregon for the Natty. Those my two big ones. And
then I'd also say I'd expect Virginia Tech to play
pretty well on Saturday Night. Historically, they've been good with
their back against the wall. They're coming off a bye week,
really good off of a bye week before they played
Boston College. So I think the HOKI is gonna look
pretty good on Saturday Night.
Speaker 2: And I expected Virginia Tech probably to have a home
game a duke, right, Sam.
Speaker 3: Hey, I'm driving. It's about gosh, I don't know, terms
about three hours from my house. I'll be down there
with my dad. Yeah, it's gonna be a whole lot
of orange and maroon.
Speaker 2: Are you gonna be sitting in the new deck that
they have there, Sam, No, I.
Speaker 3: Think my tickets are like all the way at the end.
I'm basically in the back of the end zone on
like where that little bowl is on Virginia Tech's sideline.
So it's a not a terrible stadium to watch a game.
It's so small that every seat is kind of a
decent seat. But I don't care if I have to
watch the game with binoculars. If they win, I'm good
with it.
Speaker 2: Outstanding, outstanding. I'll just say one other thing. Make sure
you watch, Sam and Jeff, make sure you watch. This
will be my open mic. North Dakota is playing South
Dakota on the road this week. If they win, they
will get home advantage throughout the entire playoffs because they
beat South Dakota State earlier in the year of Say,
if North Dakota State loses South Dakota State, then we'll
be in the driver's seat to get home field advantage
from the Missouri Valley. So that's a huge game with
a huge game with implications here because this might be
the visor's last year in FCS, and I'm gonna be
sad to see that.
Speaker 3: Hey, I mean this is this is Montana State's year,
right right right right, another love there right, another Bison
alumna head coach there at Montana State.
Speaker 1: I think that's wonderful, dude.
Speaker 3: The FCS needs more attention. I think they need to
maybe adopt what Conference USA and stuff is adopted with
some of these midweek games. But the quality of play
is really fun. Some of these stadiums and fan bases
are awesome and it's super loud. Like I was watching
a Montana game a few nights ago, weeks ago, and
I was like, gosh, it sounds louder than like most
of the power forward games I listened to today on
the TV. So FCS needs a little bit more glove
from the national.
Speaker 2: I'm with you, Jeff, You're up friend.
Speaker 1: Well, guys, you know, like I said earlier, college basketball
season is underway, and you know, we're pretty positive here
on this on this podcast talking about the ACC but
basketball season has quietly not started well for the conference.
They're starting to rack up quite a few out of
conference losses without very many noteworthy wins, unfortunately. And you
start at the top. You know, North Carolina, you know,
no shame in going to Kansas and you know, losing
a game there. Jayhawks are a number one team in
the country, but they led that game late, they were
down twenty and played fantastic in the second half. And
I mean, I think North Carolina is a very legitimate,
you know team, a top fifteen team, no question about it.
But they led Kansas late and they could have won
that game and it got away from him. And then
you go to Duke, who basically clearly were more talented
than Kentucky in that game, had a nine point lead
at the half, and then came to the final few
minutes of the game. And you know, when you have
the expectations a player like Cooper flag has, I mean,
they're just through the roof. He's seventeen years old, and
you know he's going to be a fantastic player, probably
the number one or number two you know, draft pick.
When he comes comes out and he's just putting out
eye popping stats already. But at the end of that game,
and I put this a lot on John Shire Cooper
Flagg did not handle the situation very well. He had
a couple turnovers, struggled there in the last ninety minutes,
and Duke let what would have been probably a pretty good,
you know, Q one win get away from Kentucky and
and and John Shire. He's starting to get a little
bit of a reputation, you know, of a of a
Brian Kelly or James Franklin, where you know, he's gonna
win twenty five game, They're gonna win a ton of games.
Duke's gonna be a top three seed, you know, but
he has you know, is he gonna be able to
coach Duke to that next level? And he was not
very good. He got really out coached by the Kentucky
head guy, Pope, you know, with a team of complete
roster turnover at Kentucky, and and was completely out coached
by him. And and that's a concern I think for Duke.
And then you go further down on the list. Clemson
today going on to going to Boise State, maybe the
top team in the Mountain West, but they were they
were thoroughly handled on the road and that game lost
by by thirteen. Georgia Tech already with a couple home
losses to North Florida and Georgia at home really one
of the early disappointments of the season. Virginia Tech, sorry, guys,
you know, looked really bad against Penn State. You have Syracuse,
they're three and oh, but they've got They've had to
go down to the final seconds with with some really
inferior competition. And I mean, honestly, I think the only
team that is really, you know, exceeded expectation it's Pittsburgh,
Who's they've blown out everyone they have played. They had
West Virginia at home and absolutely destroyed West Virginia. Virginia
picked up a pretty decent win over a team with
some talent, but it's struggling still. But you know, they
cruised against Villanova, but the number of quality wins just
has not been there for the ACC teams. And wake
Forest beat Michigan, which was probably one of the better
quality wins, comes back and get stumped by Xavier, so
they couldn't build on any momentum there. And you just
have these kind of losses are all over the schedule.
So now as we get into the you know, the
preseason tournament schedule, there's going to be a number of
more opportunities for the ACC to try to pick up
you know, some quality wins, and they got to do it.
Are we going to be stuck where we've been like
the last three or four years, where you know, the
ACC is struggling to get you know, more than a
handful of bids to the tournament and then you know,
they play really great in the tournament, which is fantastic,
but the number of bids is getting decided, you know,
in these November and December games, and and the ACC
just honestly has not played well collectively as a as
a conference in the early going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did Tech doesn't look great right now, but they're
a really young team and they have a lot of
room to grow. I think they're going to get better
each and every week. But they weren't ready for a
test like Penn State. And that's kind of what the
aec I feel like needs in order to boost resumes.
They need teams like Virginia Tech, Boston College, maybe throwing
Florida State in there, like some of these programs that
don't normally win as much they need them to be serviceable,
good teams, and right now, I don't think they're doing
that at all. Like Boston College hasn't looked good. They
played VCU in a preseason tournament, They've lost a game
by like thirty, like it was not remotely close. And
I do think the ACC is starting to fall behind
a bit in basketball. I think that's where you're seeing
the TV money that football is bringing in that disparaging.
I think it's showing up on the hardwood more than
it is the football field, to be honest with you.
So I'll be interested to see what college basketball season
looks like. But it's early, it's right, so there's a
lot of opportunity for some of these teams to make
a statement.
Speaker 1: Definite, definitely, Sam. I mean it's it's it's too it's
far too early to press the panic button. But the
conference needs needs to kind of make a move pretty soon,
uh and start picking up some wins, and there'll be opportunities,
you know, the ACC SEC challenges coming up. There's plenty
of tournament games, uh, preseason tournament games to try to
pick up some quality, quality wins. But the last seven
ten days not not so good for the ACC. MH.
Speaker 2: Sam, thank you so much for joining us this Sunday
evening and spending your Sunday evening with us on the podcast,
and we would love to have you come on again sometimes.
Thanks so much, Ben.
Speaker 3: Hey anytime fellas, you'll have a good evening.
Speaker 2: Take care every great week, guys,