Really? Fourteen weeks of ACC Football previews

It’s Sunday, August 30, just a few days before North Carolina opens its football season in Charlotte against South Carolina  and Duke’s season opener at Tulane, both on a Thursday night. It’s six days away from NC State’s season opener at home against Troy. And, in The News & Observer, college football sports writer Joe Giglio is focused on the Virginia Cavaliers, Giglio’s choice for finishing last in the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Coastal Division.

His quest to get to that point began today with a 14-week series on ACC football, writing about each team in the league based on his pre-season predictions of order of finish. He started today with Florida State, his choice to win the Atlantic Division. NC State’s profile will come on June 14; UNC’s is August 2; Duke’s is the next week, each profile running in a Sunday edition.

In this neighborhood of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, where the loyalties run Red and two shades of Blue, will this series grasp the attention of the few rabid college football fans, those who want to know all about every team, especially the ACC teams? That’s really doubtful, that grasping of attention, but it’s something to take up space in the newspaper that goes to bed early.

Giglio has improved a lot as a writer over the past few years, not that he needs my blessing. His stories appear in The N&O and The Charlotte Observer so his coverage is more than just the circulation in this area, but the fan base in Charlotte is similar to Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill. So, the June 28 preview on Boston College, the July 26 look at Georgia Tech, and the August 23 writing about Miami should receive cursory reading.

It’s a challenge for any writer to be creative enough to put together a 14 week series on anything. It’s tough to write something every day for this blog. Maybe as the summer doldrums progress, Giglio will be inventive in his effort, keeping our attention as we march toward that August 30 edition to learn just how the Cavaliers will place last in the Coastal Division of the ACC.

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