Football coaches eager to stay up top

AMELIA ISLAND – Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher and North Carolina’s Larry Fedora remember the sentiments before the Atlantic Coast Conference achieved its recent football success.

With the Southeastern Conference riding a streak of seven consecutive national championships from 2006-12, the ACC was continuously fighting for national legitimacy despite being traditionally considered a basketball conference.

In the last few years, however, the perception has drastically changed.

Fisher helped FSU win the 2013 national championship, the league’s first national title since the Seminoles won in 1999, behind Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 overall pick Jameis Winston.

Swinney moved the needle further with two consecutive national title game appearances against Alabama, including his first national title last season. Louisville’s Lamar Jackson added to the positive buzz after becoming the conference’s second Heisman winner in four years last season.

The SEC might lead all conferences with the most NFL draft picks for 11 consecutive years, including a 158-116 edge over the ACC in the last three years, but the ACC has a 19-13 edge over its SEC counterparts on the field in the same three-year span.

“There’s really nothing nobody can say that we haven’t done,” Swinney said during ACC spring meetings this week. “We used to have these conversations five or six or seven years ago, and I used to say, ‘We just have to keep our mouth shut and go to work. We start winning some games, and the questions will change.’

“And that’s what has happened.”

The ACC has reached the mountain top. Now, it hopes to stay there.

Fisher says one key to helping the league keep its status is continuing to schedule and come out victorious in higher-profile, nonconference games.

Florida State will open its 2017 football season against Alabama. Georgia Tech and NC State also open the season against South Carolina and Tennessee, respectively, from the SEC.

Virginia Tech opens against the Big 12’s West Virginia, Clemson faces the SEC’s Auburn in the second week and Duke plays at the Big 12’s Baylor in the third week. In-state rivalry games between ACC and SEC schools will be played at the end of the regular season.

“We can’t rest on our laurels,” Fisher said. “We can’t say ‘OK, we’ve got here.’ We’ve got to say, ‘What’s the next step?’ Where do we have to go?’ [We have to see] the next vision of what we have to get to.

“We have to stay hungry in playing in those games and being successful. That’s why we’re scheduling the schedules we’re scheduling, and continue doing the things we’re doing.”

While Fisher, Swinney, Fedora, Louisville’s Bobby Petrino, Georgia Tech’s Paul Johnson and Duke’s David Cutcliffe have become fixtures in the ACC, the league has also welcomed success from new additions like Miami’s Mark Richt, Virginia Tech’s Justin Fuente and Syracuse’s Dino Babers. Other league coaches are still on the rise.

The ACC was 10-4 in Power 5 matchups against nonconference opponents, including 9-3 in bowl games last season.

Still, the perception of the ACC as a basketball conference looms over the football coaches.

“We know the history of basketball in this league. We wanted to climb to where they were and I think we’ve done that,” Fedora said.

JOE SKIPPER/AP Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney says the conference has changed the narrative concerning football.