ESPN Spews Lies About the ACC's Opening Weekend

By all accounts, the ACC had a very good opening weekend suffering only two non-conference losses via the two worst programs in the conference while Florida State took down LSU, North Carolina beat South Carolina, and Duke showed that the ACC has as much quality depth as it has had in awhile with their upset of Clemson. This came as the ACC went 2-1 against the SEC (with the two wins being dominant and the loss being unsurprising in every facet), and while the SEC & Big 12 both lost three non-conference games all of which were upsets for Big 12 schools.

So naturally, this was a very successful weekend for the ACC, the type of which a media partner can honestly promote as a clear sign that the ACC is as strong as it has been in years.

As the great Lee Corso says, Not So Fast My Friend. See here's a screenshot from SportsCenter.

Talk about a lazy, agenda-pushing segment from SportsCenter that goes beneath standards of actual decent journalism and analysis. The fact that you mention 2 teams who lost to other ACC teams without context is absurd. Then you mention the two worst teams in the ACC one of which lost as expected to Tennessee and the other one which is just a bad program in BC.

And on top of that, how about not adding any reasonable context not only about the fact that two of those losses were conference games, but also about the other big wins in the league. How do you barely mention the BIGGEST game of the week during which an ACC team on Florida State beat a top 10 LSU team by 21 in a second half that was never close. Then how do you not mention the game where your premier pregame show College GameDay was at and during which UNC dominated South Carolina to win by two scores. And let's not forget to mention that both of these were primetime games on ABC heavily promoted by ESPN in the lead-up to it.

It's also fair to have no more than a glancing mention of the rest of the conference though the rest of the league was pretty dominant including Pittsburgh routing Wofford, Miami-FL beating Miami-OH by 5 touchdowns, and Syracuse doing what you should against a weak FCS opponent and winning by 65. Also, a solid NC State team went on the road and took care of business with a 24-14 victory over UCONN who went to a bowl game last year.

The fact that ESPN, the network who controls the ACC's media rights and has a vested interest in the success of the conference via their co-ownership of the ACC Network, is spewing lies about one of their premium college football products is absurd on so many levels including financially. They have a vested interest to make the ACC look good which this week easily allows for because it's the truth yet they spew lies about the ACC when the conference had a better opening week than the SEC.

Then again, maybe there's your answer why they did because ESPN can't possibly say a bad word about the SEC. Maybe it would have been different if they went 2-1 against the Big 10 and had fewer losses than the B1G. The sabotage conspiracy that some will throw out there makes no sense, but maybe there's a little ego stroking of the SEC that ESPN feels they have to do rather than be 100% truthful in their analysis.