ANALYSIS: Comparing the Hurricanes’ opponents in the ACC vs. the old Big East … in hindsight did conference switch precipitate football issues?

Ah, the good old days. When fans talk about Miami being “back,” well, that pretty much coincided with the program leaving the Big East for the ACC starting with the 2004 season.

The Hurricanes’ final four seasons in the old league saw the team win 11 or more games each year and go 46-4 overall with a national title in 2001 and one that was robbed by a bad call in 2002. In the 19 years since the program’s been in the ACC? There has been all of one winning season, 10-3 in 2017.

On its face value, maybe the downward trend for the program is the ACC’s fault.

So CaneSport took a deeper dive to see if that’s actually the case. Is the slide in wins just as much a case of facing consistently better competition as it is perhaps coaching problems/recruiting and evaluation failures? After all, once you struggle for a few years (7-6 in 2006, 5-7 in 2007, 7-6 in 2008) it makes it much tougher to recruit that top national talent that was begging to come to UM from the late ‘80s and throughout the ‘90s into the early 2000s.

Let’s take a closer look, starting with the Big East programs (Miami was in the conference from 1991-2003 after leaving its independent status behind): Miami’s final year in the conference saw UM dominate easily, finishing 11-2 and with no other Big East team ending with better than an 8-5 record. The other programs in the league were West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, Boston College, Syracuse, Rutgers and Temple.

In those days Virginia Tech was pretty good every few years, but really none of those programs were anywhere close to Miami’s level. So each year you could point to six or seven fairly easy wins off the bat, right?

You can look at that final 2003 season as a microcosm of what Miami faced on an annual basis as part of that league. There were always two or three tough out of conference games (in this case the annual FSU game plus Florida and Tennessee, with the team going 2-1 in those in 2003) and a couple of easier nonconference opponents (in this case an opener at Louisiana Tech and game 3 vs. East Carolina).

When you add the nonconference foes with the relatively easy Big East schedule, you are going to do some easy math and get to an almost automatic 8 wins (with Virginia Tech a good conference foe not included) – West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Boston College, Syracuse, Rutgers and Temple plus La. Tech and East Carolina.

West Virginia, from 1991-2003, had one 10-win season and seven years with five or more losses; Pitt never won more than nine games in that 13-year Big East span and had seven seasons with a losing record; BC also never won more than nine games and had five losing seasons; Syracuse won 10 games in its first two years in the league but then only won 10 games one other time, in 2001; Rutgers had a losing record in all but two of those years; Temple never won more than four games in that span. Then there were the “gimmes” like in 2003 with La. Tech (5-7 in WAC in 2003) and East Carolina (1-11 in C-USA 2003).

Would the Miami of today like to have pretty much eight guaranteed wins against not-real-good opponents to start a season like it did back in those days?

Probably.

But instead this is what the Canes have faced in the last 19 years, not including the usual 1-2 difficult out of conference foes per year as well:

ANNUAL ACC OPPONENTS

* Florida State: Seven 10-win seasons in last 13 years, projected as a top national team this year

* North Carolina: Won 11 games in 2015, typically a 7- to 8-win program

* Duke: Up and down program that won 10 games in 2013 and has 7 or more wins in six of last 10 seasons, went 9-4 in 2022

* Pitt: Joined ACC in 2013 and has winning record in all but 2 years since but only double-digit wins once (11-3 in 2021)

* Georgia Tech: Had winning record from 1997-2009; since then only had two real good seasons at 11-3 in 2014 and 9-4 in 2016

* Virginia: Former bottom dwelling program from 2008-16 that went 8-5 in 2018 and 9-5 in 2019 before returning to mediocrity

* Virginia Tech: Won 10 or more games for its first 8 seasons in the ACC from 2004-2011 but has only one 10-win season since

ACC FORMER ATLANTIC OPPONENTS (not an annual opponent, although that changes this year with a new format)

* Clemson: The top program in the conference has won 10 or more games every year since 2011 including two national titles

* Louisville: Joined ACC in 2014 and has not won 10 games since (was 11-2 and 12-1 before joining)

* NC State: Has not won 10 games since 2002 but is usually in that 7-9 win area over the last 13 years

* Syracuse: Joined ACC in 2013 and has only three winning seasons since (won 8 games in two of its final three years in Big East)

* Wake Forest: Has a pair of 10-win seasons in its history (11 wins in 2006 and 2021), after being mired in mediocrity/failure has won 8 or more games in four of last six seasons

* Boston College: Joined ACC in 2005, won 10 games in 2006 and 11 in 2007, then after a nine- and eight-win year hasn’t won more than seven games since

So yes, it’s a tougher road to a championship in the ACC than it was in the Big East with fewer “easy” wins.

But aside from Clemson it’s not like any of these other programs should be so difficult for a strong Miami team to beat.

So was the switch in conferences the cause of Miami’s fall from the top echelon of the country? Perhaps in a small part, since certainly it was a bit easier in that old conference … and not faring well costs you with top recruits. But there also were so many other issues along the way, a cascade of failures.

Now it’s on Mario Cristobal to reverse history and get Miami to the top of the ACC and the nation.

The post ANALYSIS: Comparing the Hurricanes’ opponents in the ACC vs. the old Big East … in hindsight did conference switch precipitate football issues? appeared first on On3.