Author Archives: a5

That’s right, I’m still here

Given the catastrophe that is the ACC Coastal, here is a sampling of the possible division scenarios:

  1. Duke wins out against GT and Miami. They win the division. Needless to say, it’s pretty rare for a team that controls its own destiny after 10 games to be double-digit underdogs in their two remaining games.
  2. GT beats Duke, Duke beats Miami. GT wins Coastal.
  3. Duke beats GT and loses to Miami. Miami wins Coastal.
  4. Duke loses to both GT and Miami, UNC goes 1-1 or 0-2 against UVA and Maryland. Miami wins Coastal by head-to-head win over GT earlier this year.
  5. Duke loses to both GT and Miami, UNC goes 2-0 to finish. This is where it gets fun. To save some trouble, it goes straight to ACC tiebreak rule #3, which I’ll quote here in all its confusing glory:

Head-to-head competition versus the team within the division with the best overall (divisional or conference) record, and proceeding through the division. Multiple ties within the division will be broken first to last.

In English, this means that that the teams in the tiebreak will have their head-to-head results against teams in the division that are outside the tiebreak group compared in descending order. In this scenario, the winner hinges on the winner of UVA-VT.  If VT wins (assuming they beat BC), Miami goes to Charlotte.

If UVA wins, things get really interesting. There would then be a 3-way tie for 4th at 3-5, which would mean that the tie for 1st could not be broken until that was resolved (also, the tie for 4th can’t be broken until the tie for 1st is).  Problem is that the rule says ties have to be broken from the top down, and none of these teams are likely to be ranked at the end of the year…so we’d possibly have to fall through to tiebreaker #8, which is a random drawing.

Update: If Miami self-imposes a postseason ban then we could potentially end up with a 4-way tie at 4-4 for “first” (GT loses to Duke, Duke loses to Miami, UNC goes 1-1, VT goes 2-0) due to a 5-3 Miami being ineligible. 

In this scenario, VT and Duke would come out of the first set due to being 2-1 against the group. VT then takes it due to beating Duke head-to-head, I think. As far as I can tell, this is VT’s only possible scenario now that UNC is allowed to create ties.

Update 2: Ken Sugiura has a better version (worked out with help from the ACC league office) HERE

On Notice! Week 4

I don’t feel like doing the board this week, so just a few quick hits about who sucked this weekend:

Nebraska – Beat Ball State by 1 point – woo!
Louisville – Lost to the (formerly) worst team in the Big East, Syracuse. You gotta play defense to win games.
Georgia Tech – UVA is not a good football team – should have won by 14, but instead lost due to 2 fluke plays. We appear to be on the way to another 7-5 season, but Gailey will be forced out if he loses to UGA again.
Texas A&M- Embarrassed by Miami on national TV. Makes the ACC look a little better.
Clemson – Oh crap. At least it’s at home.

On Notice! Week 3


Notre Dame – Holy crap this team is awful…I kind of wish they were at least decent so that GT’s win over them looks like some kind of accomplishment, but I guess that isn’t going to happen.
Northwestern – Lost to Duke…now people might shut up about the ACC, but I doubt it.
University of Arkansas – Growing the legend of Saban by losing to ‘Bama, not to mention wasting the efforts of Humanity Advanced, Darren McFadden.
UCLA – Got blown out by Utah, but don’t confuse this Utah team with the Urban Meyer teams of a few years ago…this was just a decent MWC team, nothing more. Karl Dorrell will get fired if he doesn’t beat USC again, and it will be traced back to this game.
Stupid GT Fans – A few gems of stupid from The Hive, the normally far too positive GT board:

The problem is the defense against passing; it always has been with Tenuta, and it will always be so. As long as Tenuta is the Defensive Coordinator, the teams with a good passer will tear us apart.

I knew the game was over when Boston College came out deep in their territory, junked the run, and decided to come out passing. They passed all the way to Tech’s end-zone. I turned off the TV as I knew it was another loss because of Tenuta’s ineptness against the pass.

We will lose to Clemson, UGA, and any team who has a good passer. This will never change at GT until Tenuta is replaced.

Any team that will throw the short pass to control the game and the long one occasionally to stretch our defense will beat us. When we are dominated in “time” by the opposing team by continuing to get first downs from the short passing game, we do not have the opportunity to get in a rhythm on offense. We feel pressured because we know the passing team will come right back on the field and control the game with the short passes.

I assure you, you can take it to the bank, it will “never” change at Tech until Gailey gets rid of the last obstacle to winning at Tech, and that obstacle is Tenuta.

Yeah – Chan should fire the man that’s pretty much the only reason he still has a job. Without Tenuta’s Top-15(ish) defenses, GT is probably a 4-8 team at best during the past 4 years. I’d also like to point out that no one else in the ACC has the QB or the OL to pull off the game plan BC used against Tech’s D.

Auburn University – This is more to confirm Tito’s feelings about his team than anything. That and they suck…the only game left for them is the Iron Bowl.

ESPNU – This is more at Comcast for not carrying it, but it upsets me that I’ll have to get up early-ish and go to a bar to watch…

University of Virginia – …this week’s opponent. GT hasn’t won @ UVA since 1990 when we upset them with a last second FG en route to our split MNC. This year would appear to be the end of that streak, since Jameel Sewell still sucks. Though he isn’t as bad as he was in his first start against GT, he’s still not nearly good enough to do anything resembling what BC did. Also, their WR have poor hands and their running game isn’t anything special. I can’t see GT losing this game, but being on the road might keep it close.

On Notice! (Belated Week 1 Edition)

Everyone’s (well, the like 3 people who read this thing, anyway) favorite weekly feature announcing who sucked last week in CFB is back for it’s second season!



1) University of Michigan – This one is pretty obvious, but in case you didn’t know UM lost to D1-AA (I refuse to call it the “Championship Subdivision”) Appalachian State 34-32. WTG guys.
2) University of Virginia – Now we enter the Crappy ACC teams section of the post. UVA lost to Wyoming, and from what I hear, their QB looked pretty awful.
3) North Carolina State University – Lost to UCF – good job Tom O’Brien.
4) Duke University – Lost to UConn 45-14 in what was probably their best chance to win a game this season. The L streak is now at 21 and counting.
5) Sports Media – 2 things here: First, Lloyd Carr is not going to get fired at Michigan, no matter what those idiots keep calling for in their columns. Second, almost all the articles about the GT-ND game are about how much ND sucks, and in some you have a hard time telling what team they even played against. It’d be nice to give a little credit to GT for being a pretty good team, but I haven’t seen any mainstream articles about this.
6) Charlie Weis – In retrospect, he must have been withholding the starting QB because he knew they all sucked. A “genius” should be able to get it done with less than top-flight talent and have his team looking at least somewhat prepared in Week 1.
7) Early Polls – Michigan at #5 looks pretty dumb right now. As does having FSU at #19 and BC and GT unranked. Good job dumbasses. (BTW, if anyone from the BlogPoll reads this, I would love to vote, and will announce my love for all things poll related)
8) Samford – Little D1-AA cupcake action coming up this weekend for GT – posters on GT message boards are like “if we don’t take this seriously, we’ll end up like Michigan!!!!1111”. This is an obviously dumb statement – Samford and App State aren’t even close in terms of talent. Plus, they’re the Bulldogs.

Basketball update

GT has looked decidedly less lost lately, winning 5 of the last 6 games. Today we go on the road to UVA, and winning the game would dramatically enhance our NCAA tournament prospects. A loss means we would have to beat UNC AND BC next week at home – which is possible since we play really well at home, but pretty unlikely.

The game today is at 3:30 EST on ABC if anyone actually reads this.