Clemson Football: The ACC just was smarter than the SEC

Clemson football & the ACC were just smarter than the SEC

The Clemson football program benefitted from the proactiveness of the ACC when it came to pushing for a 2020 season this fall.

Before we get started, let’s go ahead and say there are plenty of dumb decisions the ACC has made this year and in year’s past under the leadership of John Swofford. We all know about those. The ACC finally had leverage to lure Notre Dame into its conference as a full-time member this preseason and, instead, gave the Irish exactly what they wanted (and more) while basically having to give up next to nothing.

But let’s not talk about the conference’s failures for a moment.

There are a number of national analysts who were upset that the ACC decided to change course and evaluate Clemson football, Notre Dame and Miami on a nine-game conference schedule to maintain the integrity of the conference title game. That, in turn, meant that both Clemson and Notre Dame wouldn’t play games on Saturday, Dec.12– the week before the ACC Championship game.

Many analysts said that was the ACC giving the Tigers and Irish a competitive advantage in the race for the CFB Playoff, but in reality it was just the byproduct of the conference’s better decision-making from earlier in the year.

Clemson football is the beneficiary of starting the season earlier than the SEC

You can complain all you want to about Clemson and Notre Dame having an extra week of rest, but the fact still remains: Both programs started their season earlier.

The ACC intentionally started its season weeks before the SEC to allow for its conference to have built-in bye weeks to make up games. And it has worked like a charm.

Clemson will have played 10 games on the season- equal to the SEC- and the Tigers will have an extra week of rest, as a result.

The SEC could’ve easily started its season earlier and had more time to fill in make-up games. The conference could’ve agreed with the ACC to play a non-conference game, which would’ve allowed for teams of difference conferences to also be on the same playing field, but the SEC elected not to. And, for that, they have no one but themselves to blame.

It doesn’t make sense for Clemson or Notre Dame to risk injury for the sake of playing an 11th game when no other conference champion is going to have played more than 10 regular season games. (The Big Ten might only have five).

Call it a ‘competitive advantage’ if you want, but we’ll just call it what it is: The ACC was better prepared and ahead of the curve compared to the Big Ten and even the mighty SEC.