How do you measure commitment to football? 

You can't stick a thermometer in someone's heart (well, you could, but I'm not sure how he'd like it).  So we'll stick to the non-invasive stuff.

You can count fans in the stands.  Obviously certain schools have bigger stadiums - Florida State and Clemson are the biggest in the ACC.  Sell-outs indicate something about fan support; Clemson sold out 2 games, Wake Forest sold-out 4 games, and Virginia Tech sold out all of their games.

A measure of fan loyalty is how good was your lowest attendance of the year.  If you still have fans showing up when you play Po-Dunk U with nothing at stake then you can assume that your fans are serious about their football team.

What about the athletic department? Again, some schools have more money to spend than others, but overall budget doesn't seem to be the deciding factor.  Duke has more money than Boise State, but which one is the better football team?  So to measure the commitment level of the athletic department we looked at percent of budget spent on football.  Miami jumps out as the most highly-focused team in the Atlantic Coast Conference, spending over 40% of their total athletic budget on football.  Nobody spent less than 21% on football, but the successful schools spent more.

Florida State is the one exception - they only spent 22% of their total budget on football.  That's still $19 million in one year, but it appears that their sports dollars may be stretched a bit too thin (hence the budget deficit - which appears to come from spending too much on non-revenue sports quite frankly).

BOTTOM LINE: The two schools most committed to football last year - Clemson and Virginia Tech - are also the two which played for the conference championship and in BCS bowls.  Florida State and Miami are not far behind, however.

For detailed analysis, check out ACCFootballRx:Measuring ACC Teams Committment to Football.