Tigers picked fifth

Well, the ACC high muckety-mucks have voted, and Clemson is picked to finish fifth in the league this year. The top four are Florida State, N.C. State, Maryland and Virginia.

That dovetails pretty well with everything else I've been reading, though Athlon ranks them like this: N.C. State, Florida State, Maryland, Virginia, Clemson, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, UNC, Duke.

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I've been monitoring a running dispute on the Tigernet's message board about assistant coach Dabo Swinney's questionable summertime interaction with receiver Kelvin Grant. (It's detailed here, but to sum up, Swinney told the Greenville News he's been running with Grant as "punishment" for Grant's failure to attend summer school sessions, and a bunch of Gamecocks have hijacked the board and are screaming that it's a violation of NCAA rules.)

Now, I'm not familiar with NCAA rules, but if this is a violation, it's so minor that the most it will generate is a warning letter to the coach. After all, jogging is not the same as running routes.

Furthermore, if trying to motivate a struggling student-athlete to go to class is against the rules, then the NCAA is even more screwed-up than I thought.

UPDATE: Well, apparently it is a violation, albeit a very minor one.