Bashing ACC football against its Bowl Championship Series counterparts has become a sport of its own for league and national writers alike.

Tuesday morning, ACC commissioner John Swofford took aim at his critics with a positive spin.

Swofford reiterated his pleasure with the first four years of expansion, even though the results have yet to show themselves on the field.

Miami joined the then nine-team league four years ago, while Boston College and Virginia Tech followed a year later. Their addition was expected to elevate the ACC’s national profile, but the league has sunk behind rivals like the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-10.

Over the last four years, ACC teams are 9-31 against non-conference top 25 teams, 2-17 against non-conference top 10 teams and have failed to garner a second BCS at-large bid or even a BCS game victory.

Swofford admits the results don’t please him, but he entered expansion for the long haul.

“What I’m most interested in is the longer term. You go back the last decade (and) we’ve also had three programs in this league that have played in the national championship game (Miami, Florida State and Virginia Tech) and two (FSU, Miami) that have won it (although FSU was the only member to do so as an ACC team). There are some positives there.”

The ACC hasn’t won a BCS game since 1999, when Florida State beat the Hokies for the national title. Does that trouble Swofford? Yes, and no.

“Would I like to win every game? Absolutely. That’s what you want to do,” he said. “But how we as a conference evaluate expansion is not in the short-term competitive aspect of it, we look at the bigger aspects of it.

“If you have the kind of commitment and programs we have in our league, all of this is cyclical. Whether you have individual programs or whether it’s conferences, you have to look at history there. We could not be in a better position now for the future than we are now, to have a great deal of success.”

Swofford’s talk on expansion’s effects highlighted the commissioner’s breakfast, which wrapped up the 2008 ACC Football Kickoff.

Swofford and ACC coordinator of officials Doug Rhodes discussed the ACC title game’s impending move to Tampa and significant rule changes for 2008.

The title game spent its first two years in Jacksonville, Fla., but was plagued by poor attendance. League officials are encouraged by the response in Tampa, home of 80,000 ACC alumni. The 65,000-seat Raymond James Stadium will host the game, and although tickets don’t go on sale until Saturday, half are already spoken for.

The biggest rules change is the move to a 40-second clock for almost all situations.

The play clock will be set at 40 seconds on a dead ball, out of bounds plays and incomplete passes except during the final two minutes of a game.

A 25-second clock will be used after a penalty, a charged team or media timeout, measurements, changes of possession, points after touchdown, the start of each period, the start of overtime possessions, a replay and when an administrative stoppage occurs.

Changes are designed to shorten games without shaving plays from the game like a similar initative did in 2006.

Rhodes says the changes should cut 10-15 minutes from games while allowing 70-76 offensive plays per game.

“The offensive team determines the pace the game operates, not the officials,” he said.

Other rules changes include a revised definition of chop blocks. They are now considered a high-low or low-high combination by any two players against an opponent. Horse-collar tackles are now illegal, and all facemask penalties will be 15 yards, eliminating the five-yard “incidental” penalty.

If a coach’s replay challenge is successful, he will retain the challenge and can use it once more in a game. Wandering coaches like Clemson’s Tommy Bowden must now be more careful, though; all sideline warnings now come with a penalty. The first two infractions are five-yard penalties, and subsequent infractions are 15 yards each.