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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE
By Matt Shetler

The Atlantic Coast Conference, founded in 1953, is a twelve member conference that competes in twenty Division I sports. All members are located on the Atlantic Coast and the ACC headquarters is based in Greensboro, North Carolina. John Swofford is the 2008 commissioner of the ACC, a post he has held since 1997.
  
The conference started with seven charter members: Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina Sate, South Carolina and Wake Forest. The University of Virginia joined the fold later in 1953, upping the total to eight.
  
South Carolina left the league in 1971 to join the Southeastern Conference, leaving the ACC with only seven members, which they operated with until 1978 when Georgia Tech was admitted to the league. Florida State joined in 1991 and the ACC experienced great success as a nine member league for more than a decade.
  
In a move that created much controversy, the ACC was able to add Big East Conference members Miami and Virginia Tech in 2004 and Boston College in 2005. The move made the ACC a potential football powerhouse to go along with their already dominant basketball programs.
  
With the addition of teams, the ACC can no longer play a balanced schedule in football, so the schedule rotates, meaning not every team gets to play every team in the conference every season. The ACC split its teams into two football divisions (the Atlantic and the Coastal divisions). The winners of each division meet for the ACC Championship in Tampa, Florida.
  
The ACC is a member of the BCS and has ties to nine bowl games. The ACC champion heads to the Orange Bowl (unless playing for the national title). Other bowl games the ACC have ties with include: the Chick-fil-A Bowl, Gator Bowl, Champs Sports Bowl, Music City Bowl, Meineke Car Care Bowl, Emerald Bowl, Humanitarian Bowl and Congressional Bowl.
  
Despite being one of the larger conferences, the rivalries are aplenty between division opponents. The Miami-Florida St. rivalry is among the best in college football and the North Carolina-Duke rivalry is the best in college basketball. Both have produced some of the greatest moments in collegiate sports history.
  
As of 2008, the ACC has sent 69 teams to the College World Series, captured ten NCAA men’s basketball championship and won eleven football titles (although Miami won five of those before joining the ACC). The conference has also produced champions in sports such as: men’s and women’s soccer, women’s basketball, golf and lacrosse.
  

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