I was just glancing at the odds for ACC teams this week, and one of the lines really surprised me.

Clemson (-11.5) V. Maryland
Duke (-7) V. Virginia
Florida St. (-6) V. Colorado
Miami (-7) V. UNC
Nebraska (-6.5) V. Virginia Tech
South Florida (-8) V. NC State
Wake Forest (-15.5) V. Navy

Yes, Duke, that Duke is favored over Virginia. Ouch.

I’m not sure how I’d bet in our game, but I lean toward the Tigers.

The ACC finally woke up this past weekend….well except for that one school who is trying out a new color scheme. UNC showed that it is the NKOTB (that’s right, I shorthanded it to an 80′s boy band) while Maryland realized that in the NCAA, they don’t get preseason games. Va Tech and Ga Tech battle it out (while Va Tech got on my “hey, let’s wear Orange!” list) in Blacksburg.

Clemson played a Vanilla offense (or should I call it a Jacoby Ford offense) to defeat N.C. State. That’s all I have to say about that game. And about last weeks “let me know when the real competition starts”, well Maryland now has my attention.

Thank you Sam Swank.

Thank you for not allowing the SEC to completely own the ACC. Like the commentators said, the entire ACC was watching that final kick as it was the decider to SEC domination or not (at least until the end of the season). Other than that, I got to watch the BC v GT game and the GT offense is seriously confusing. Their option was chugging off 10 yard plays left and right. The score was only due to GT not being able to hold on to the ball, which should get better as their timing improves. BC without Matty Ice and Callender (Collender…whatever) is vanilla.

And how about that ECU team! Wow, a Holtz can coach!

Oh, and Clemson beat the Citadel…..let me know when the real competition starts up (re: after the first bye week)

TigerNet
Rivals
Google!

For it will only make you bitter in the end. And if everything does work out and Clemson wins the ACC, then at least you will be pleasantly surprised!

Damn it is getting very hard to remain the pessimist on this upcoming season!

Comments and suggestions are always welcome! Standard 1024×768 (well ok so it’s 701 due to the new column)

Both the ACC Helmet Schedule and the SEC Helmet Schedule will be maintained throughout the season and can always be obtained from the sidebar to your right Just look for these icons every Monday after a game weekend for the new one!!

Just finished up the ACC and SEC Sporting Gnomes 2008 Helmet Schedules (or SG08HS’s if you will). Just have to put the finishing touches on the servers and html and we will have them rarin to go. I apologize in advance for errors in the schedules and appreciate any corrections that you guys might find and mention. You will notice that I have changed the size of the image this year from a standard 1024×768 to accommodate the new column of conference record along with the standard overall record. This should be fun maintaining 2 schedules.

I hope to have these links incorporated into the schedules in the near future but for now:
Helmets provided by the awesome site MG’s Helmets. Check out this site for a whole slew of helmets from NFL, to NCAA to NHL. Awesome artwork over there.

Logos (background artwork) provided by SportsLogos.Net. Another great site with multitudes of logos from almost every sporting team out there.

Yesterday’s win over Duke was certainly enjoyable.

But I really want to beat these eggheads.

UPDATE: Damn it!

Though I have been living in the Charlotte area for 6 football seasons, I have yet to even pretend to read the Charlotte Observer. Personally it’s more than a bit liberal for my tastes, and somewhat understandably (many of the writers are Chapel Hill alums) geared towards “Big 4″ school coverage anytime college news, sports or otherwise, is the topic. Anyway, about a week and a half ago I posted an article discussing the brief history of the ACC-CG and where I see it going. Now, I’m pretty much a hack writer at best but if I didn’t know any better I would say they needed an article to preceed today’s announcement, jumped online, read our comments, threw in a couple official stats to back it upon and sent it to the presses. No additional insight or reasoning, just print block to fill space between adds. The article pretty much reinforces the whole reason I don’t take the local paper. Even when something worth reading is in there, it’s late enough I would have already found the info to start with. In The Observer’s defense, they quickly posted the news that Charlotte will be hosting in 2010 and 11. Tampa (shocker) was awarded the game for the next two seasons, as much because of current Charlotte Center City development that should be complete by 2010 that should act as a large attraction to fans, coupled with a large conference in 08 that should have Center City already booked up for the normal CG weekend.