Schedule Still All About The Swing Games

The ACC released the football schedules for its member schools on Wednesday (read the news release here. There were no surprises for the Cavaliers … but perhaps seeing the dates provided a heavy dose of reality. Bowl hopes, turning the program around, saving Mike London’s job? Heck, just winning a few vs. two games? Easy isn’t the first word that comes to mind.

This thing isn’t even in the vicinity of easy. UCLA to open the season and a road game at BYU in September will present significant out-of-conference challenges with proven winners at quarterback. Richmond likely will feature a London-era transfer at quarterback with Michael Strauss and Michael Rocco both there to give that game some spice for the storylines.

The Atlantic Division piece of the puzzle features Florida State, the final BCS Champion, and Louisville, led once again by offensive guru Bobby Petrino.

Forget all of that, though. UVa’s fate and likely London’s job status rest solely in the swing game world of the Coastal Division. As message board poster Yosemite Sam has pointed out in some threads recently, London owns an 8-24 conference record in four years, including an 0-8 mark in 2013. When you break that down further to just Coastal competition, London’s division record is 5-16 (1-4 in 2010, 3-2 in 2011, 1-4 in 2012, 0-6 in 2013). By extension, that means London has posted an 0-8 record against chief rivals North Carolina and Virginia Tech.

During London’s tenure, the Coastal Division has been full of evenly matched teams with wins up for grabs. In 2010, Virginia Tech won the division but everyone else lost at least three ACC games. In 2011, VT prevailed but everyone else lost at least three ACC games. In 2012, GT went to the title game while every team in the division lost at least three ACC games. Last season, Duke emerged as the winner with a 6-2 conference record while everyone else lost at least three ACC games. Essentially, this tells us that the ACC’s Coastal Division is a giant pool of toss-up games.

As I wrote in this article back in October, that’s where the London era will sort itself out. The games that could go either way on the schedule include what looks like a wide open Coastal Division with new quarterbacks all over the place. So far, London’s record in those games has not been good. If 2014 and the Mike London era is going to turn out differently, it starts there.