A word of advice to our ACC brethren

Don't even think of it.

Don't waste your brain cells and our time with any extended crowing IF Georgia Tech beats Mississippi State this weekend.

Predictably, some genius named Anonymous will take keyboard in hand and declare to the world that the gap between the SEC and ACC is much narrower than the fans of the former would like to admit.

Here's what we will admit:

1. Tech should win.
2. The teams hang from different rungs on their conference ladders. Mississippi State is at the bottom of the SEC. Tech, on the other hand, will participate in the ACC's annual scrum to see who plays in the country's worst conference championship game. Given the SEC's superiority, don't be surprised if the Bulldogs keep it close.
3. For a more informative comparison of the two leagues, let's turn to Alabama-Va. Tech. Tech, apparently the ACC's best team once again, was a couple of special team plays from being run out of the Georgia Dome. N.C. State did even less with South Carolina.
4. The ACC is already home to the season's most embarrassing loss -- William & Mary won't do, Virginia -- AND the most embarrassing win -- Florida State over JSU (that would be Jacksonville (Ala.) State University). Bobby Bowden's resume was further adorned by Saturday's thumping from South Florida.
5. Just when you thought Miami would become the first ACC football team in almost a decade to grab a chair on the national stage . . . poof!
6. ACC schools have also lost to Middle Tennessee and Richmond and have been scared silly by a subpar App State squad. Bowden won't leave. Al Groh and Ralph Friedgen won't be staying.

Now the good news. Tech, whose pummeling of North Carolina raised serious questions about Butch Davis' restoration project in Chapel Hill, should knock MSU around come Saturday.

If they don't, the floor disappears under an ACC season that's been sliding off its foundation from the start.
-- Michael Gordon


P.S. from RTR -- All defenders of the ACC would be wise to heed the words of Tallahassee (could there be a better name at a better moment?) in the new movie "Zombieland" ... "It's time to nut up or shut up."