COLLEGE FOOT BACK IN THE DAY

CHAMPIONSHIP GAME TO GIVE NEW ACC BIGGER PIECE OF BCS PIE: 2005 1. - Being prestigious basketball league was all well and good, but the ACC wanted enough football teams for two divisions. Now it has them. The conference will make history Dec. 3. That's when it will hold, in Jacksonville, its inaugural championship game for football, with the winner Championship Series. The league added two former Big East members__Miami and Virginia Tech__in 2004. A third, Boston College, comes aboard this year, giving the ACC 12 teams and culminating a controversial expansion process driven by the conference's desire to become more prominent in football. The Eagles, consistent winners under coach Tom O'Brien, a former Virginia assistant, tied for the Big East title last season and should enhance the ACC's football reputation.  Boston College can only hope to fare as well in the first season in a new home as its one-time Big East brethren__especially Virginia Tech__did last season.

Noles not the dominant team they once were, but defense has chance to be truly great. #  1  > Remember when ACC football was routinely dismissed by many as "Florida State and the Eight Dwarfs?" Alas, for the Seminoles and coach Bobby Bowden, those days are gone, never to return. That's what happens when you add Miami, Virginia Tech and now Boston College to a conference previously notable for its lack of football heavyweights. Even before the ACC expanded, however, Florida State's decline had begun. From 1992, its first season in the ACC, through 2000, FSU didn't lose more than two games in any season. In 2001, they lost four games and, for the first time, failed to capture at least a share of the ACC crown. # 2 > They regained the title in 2002 but lost__gasp!__five games. The Seminoles repeated as ACC champion in 03 but dropped three games and again didn't contend for the national title. In 04, the Noles ( 9-3,  6-2 ) could not even console thems