John Swofford today confirmed the old but unverfied rumor of a new ACC bowl tie-in. Come December, the ninth-best ACC team will travel to the snowy wilds of Washington D.C. for the Congressional Bowl.

There's just one thing. The ACC has never had nine bowl eligible teams in a season before. So you may want to hold off on the phone call to the travel agent for a bit.

The bowl's other tie-in is Navy. Yes, we've been reduced to tie-in games with individual teams. Navy was bowl eligible - and indeed played in posteason games - in the last five of new Yellow Jackets' coach Paul Johnson six seasons. In the twenty years prior to that, the Midshipmen were bowl eligible in exactly one season, 1996.