The ACC's taken a lot of heat lately -- this is what happens when a league has no offense and allows Wake Forest to come from nowhere to win a rain-soaked, 9-6 championship game one season, then makes empty seats grow for its showcase game of the year the next ...

And, yes, the conference hit rock bottom after a terrible opening weekend, thanks to flops by alleged division powers Clemson and Virginia Tech and disinterested, sick puppy routines by N.C. State and Virginia on national television. We all get it: the ACC has some image problems.

But does the Atlanta Journal-Constitution think the little conference that could is so hopeless, so desperate for any win at all against the mighty SEC, that Georgia Tech has to claim "ACC Pride" against Mississippi State? The same Mississippi State that's 14 games under .500 and en route to its seventh losing season in eight years? The Bulldogs that have failed to break the top hundred in total offense every year of Sylvester Croom's tenure, and barely scratched their way into the "Also Receiving Votes" section of the polls during last year's turnover-fueled "breakthrough"? That have carried the SEC flag this year by losing to Louisiana Tech and netting a hilariously meager safety-via-penalty in a loss to Auburn that reached near-Medusa levels of unwatchability?

Actually, yeah. The AJC does think the ACC is that desperate -- and lucky for its storyline-hungry beat writers, so do the Jackets themselves:

“Especially watching ESPN and stuff, all that talk about the SEC and how great the SEC is” grows tiresome, junior A-back Greg Smith said last week. “When next week comes, we’re definitely going to be focused on getting some respect for the ACC.”
[...]
Greg Smith, who was recruited by Georgia but not offered a scholarship, said that reality adds to the animosity.

“Most of the guys are from the Southeast,” said Smith, who is from Stone Mountain. “The ones that weren’t recruited by SEC schools will definitely have a chip on their shoulder and go out and play a little bit harder against those teams, to show that we belong with the best in the nation.”
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Emphasis added

See where the ridiculous Conference Wars have left us, in a world where "Snubbed by Georgia" can be transmogrified into the equivalent of "Snubbed by Mississippi State," and players at a program that's been to eleven straight bowl games can have "a chip on their shoulder," at home, against one of the losingest major outfits in the country. You know, to prove they "belong with the best in the nation."

Tech is a 7.5-point favorite, by the way. I dunno if the Jackets can cover that -- can they manage to put a touchdown and a field goal on the board against a mighty SEC defense? Who do the oddsmakers think they're dealing with here -- Louisiana Tech?