John Swofford wears several hats professionally, but entering his 12th season as commissioner of the ACC, he's most inclined to speak about the league.

That includes the bad that goes with the good — which includes ESPN's "Gameday" show kicking off the season in the middle of ACC territory in Atlanta.

On the first weekend of the college season, "Gameday" will broadcast from Atlanta before Clemson plays Alabama in the Georgia Dome on Aug. 30. That, Swofford said, " is certainly a good way for our league to start off."

He's also aware of the league's postseason shortcomings since expansion in 2004, yet quick to note positives that have come with the league's growth to 12 teams.

ACC teams are 14-17 in bowls since '04, as opposed to 14-10 in bowls in the four seasons before that. So when he addressed the media Tuesday morning at ACC Kickoff 2008 at Lake Oconee's Reynolds Plantation, he dwelled on potential and the future after a brief acknowledgement that, "You'd like for your champion, your best team [to do well in the postseason]."

But in a league that has a $258 million TV contract that has helped grow annual payouts to each school to nearly $12 million, wins don't always mean everything.

"Would I have liked to have won every game? Absolutely," he said in a State of the ACC address. "How we as a conference evaluate expansion is not based on the short-term competitive aspect of it. All of this at times is going to be cyclical. We could not be better positioned for the future."

Swofford, who also serves as vice chair of the new College Football Officiating L.L.C. – an organization trying to bring all 11 Division I conferences together to unify the way games are officiated – and is in his second term as coordinator of the BCS, spoke a little about each of those endeavors.

But first, he focused on the homefront, the ACC.

"[In the past school year, the ACC had] four national titles," he said of North Carolina in field hockey, Wake Forest in soccer, Boston College in hockey and Florida State in men's outdoor track and field. "We had 12 individual national titles [including Georgia Tech's Amanda McDowell in outdoor tennis].

"We had 10 national player of the year recipients, five coach of the year recipients."

Swofford pointed out that North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough was the 16th consensus national basketball player of the year to come from the ACC since '75, and, "if you look at the NFL draft ... the ACC is the first league to have two of the top four picks for three consecutive years. We led all conferences with seven first-round picks, and in the past three years the ACC led the nation with 25 first-round picks [to the SEC's 21, and the Big Ten's 18]."