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GREENSBORO — Riley Skinner believes Tim Tebow is the best quarterback in the SEC, just for the record.

And if Wake Forest is to continue its stunning resurgence as a Southeastern football power, Skinner might have to be the best quarterback in the ACC.

The league held it annual football kickoff Sunday at Grandover Resort on a day in which everyone seemed equal. And that's because they are.

The nation's deepest and most balanced conference begins that way every season, and in recent years it has ended that way, too.

"Every team can beat every other team in the league," the laid-back senior said. And he includes Wake in that equation.

The rise of Wake Forest continues to stun and puzzle those who grew up watching the Deacons lose week after week, and it's still one of the great moments in this state's history when Wake played in the Orange Bowl after the 2006 season.

And as unbelievable as that was, the Deacons certainly have a chance to do it again this year. Why not?

The ACC is in a strange era of equality, a time when the two Florida schools are suddenly struggling to get back into the national picture and leaving open a path to the conference championship no one believed possible. Until a school emerges from the vast middle and climbs into the national championship race, the ACC title will remain available to the best team standing.

This of course also leaves the conference open to criticism that it's not that good. This odd conclusion doesn't seem to rankle the league all that much, certainly not in the way the SEC might react to such criticism. That league just finished bouncing off the walls of a town in Alabama just trying to hold a calm media storm before the resumption of the wars that characterize Southern football. By comparison, the ACC hasn't felt that kind of passion since South Carolina seceded. From the league, not the union.

The ACC carries on as a unique conference of collegial institutions that also play football, leading the nation in graduation rates year after year and overwhelming the rickety bowl structure by sending basically everybody except Duke year after year.

Last year was no different with no national title contender coming forward as the ACC settled into a record-breaking season of grudging respect.

"We were very pleased overall with last year's football season," commissioner John Swofford said Sunday. "Anytime you have a situation where you have 10 teams that are playing in bowl games, which was an NCAA record, you have to feel very good about it."

The league has five schools with national championship trophies and about a half-dozen more that consider such an achievement a dream at best. But at the soul of the conference, there's nothing wrong with that.

"If you know anything about the Atlantic Coast Conference and its history and tradition and where the commitment is on our campuses, that balance of academics and athletics is at the forefront," Swofford said.

He pointed out the ACC has had more first-round NFL draft picks than any other conference and over the last four years and has sent 34 teams to bowl games, more than any other conference.

He could've also pointed out that no school is accusing another of capital crimes, no coaches are using the media to fight recruiting battles, no players are being asked tawdry questions about their personal life and no one is even all that worried about the fact that no school in the league is being mentioned as a possible national champion.

OK, Clemson and Virginia Tech think they're going to win it every year, but that's another story.

Last year, the league sent its usual haul of talent to the NFL and sent 10 of its teams to bowl games and took another year off from the national championship race. Nothing that we know of now suggests that will change this year.

That's fine with Skinner, the Wake senior who was a freshman acquaintance of Tebow's. Unlike the ballyhooed Florida recruit, Skinner considered going to 1-AA Samford or just enrolling at Georgia and being a student. Wake Forest, the ACC's most unlikely power, realized many of the nation's blue-chippers couldn't play dead in a cowboy movie and brought in the kid to be third string. The rest is Deacon lore.

No one asked Skinner about his personal life Sunday. No one asked him about the national title. They asked him about growing up in Jacksonville. They asked about his grades. It's really not football season yet, and the ACC traditionally eases into these things anyway.

Football season starts here when it's good and ready, and someday soon the league's schools will be back to battling for national championships and all that goes with them.

In the meantime, the ACC coaches are in town today to play some golf. Football can wait.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com