When Notre Dame takes on Texas tonight on the first day of the College World Series, the Fighting Irish will be the only participant from the Atlantic Coast Conference in an eight-team field that also includes four current members of the Southeastern Conference, two soon-to-be members of the SEC, and Stanford of the Pac-12.

What the Irish and their fans may not realize is that the ACC’s stunning lack of success in Omaha is one of the most bizarre on-field developments in the history of the 69-year-old league.

As a general rule of thumb, when any conference has a bunch of teams that are really good at a particular sport, someone breaks through for a national championship every now and then. It makes sense, right?

For example, in men’s basketball, ACC teams often attract elite coaches, sign top recruits, win lots of games, populate the national Top 25 rankings, earn buckets of March Madness bids and send record-setting numbers of players to the NBA. Sure enough, current members of the ACC have won six of the last 13 NCAA Tournaments in men’s basketball, with Duke, Louisville, UNC and Virginia all contributing to that impressive total.

Similarly, when any conference lacks those same superlatives in a given sport, it rarely or perhaps never breaks through for a national championship in that sport.

For example, all 15 ACC schools sponsor women’s volleyball, but those teams are rarely high in the national rankings, and no ACC team has ever come close to an NCAA title in that sport.

ACC baseball is an anomaly in the sense that, decade after decade, the league has produced lots of great coaches, elite players, highly ranked teams and even a large number of College World Series participants, yet somehow it has managed only two NCAA champions: Wake Forest way back in 1955, and UVA in 2015.

Oddly, the three programs with the most College World Series appearances without ever winning the title are all from the ACC: Florida State with 23 trips, Clemson with 12 and UNC with 11.

As usual, ACC baseball has been well represented in the NCAA Tournament this year, with a national-best nine bids, four of the top 12 seeds, and four teams advancing to the Super Regionals, baseball’s version of the Sweet 16. However, Louisville, UNC and Virginia Tech were eliminated last weekend, with the Tar Heels and the Hokies falling on their home fields.

Unless an underdog Notre Dame team somehow takes the title this year, one of the ACC’s strangest streaks in any sport will continue.

 

Featured image via Associated Press/Randy Sartin


Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.