DURHAM, N.C. – There seems to be a weird kind of karma that surrounds ACC athletic programs.

It’s almost like the league schools can choose success in football or basketball – but not in both. The ACC has a long-standing balance between teams that almost always seem to win on the gridiron and struggle on the hardcourt – and vice versa.

Of course, it’s not a perfect balance. Recently, Maryland won the ACC football title and played in the Orange Bowl in the same school year as Juan Dixon led the Terps to the national basketball title. Mack Brown put together some top 10 football teams at UNC while Dean Smith was enjoying the last few Final Fours of his glorious career.

Still, those are the exceptions.

Normally, the ACC football season belongs to Florida State or Clemson or newcomers Miami and Virginia Tech. Then basketball begins and the spotlight shifts to Tobacco Road, where North Carolina, Duke and often Wake Forest and N.C. State are the league’s power programs.

In the last 25 years, North Carolina’s so-called “Big Four” teams have won exactly one ACC football title and produced three national top 10 teams. In that same span, the four Tobacco Road teams have won 20 of 25 ACC basketball titles, claimed seven national championships and produced 39 top 10 teams.

It’s fascinating to watch the basketball/football karma work. Take the 1994-95 season for instance. Duke enjoyed a totally unexpected success on the football field, winning eight games and earning a bowl bid. But that winter, a basketball program that had played in the Final Four in seven of the previous nine seasons collapsed and finished 13-18 as head coach Mike Krzyzewski left the team with back problems. Krzyzewski returned a year later and immediately restored his basketball program to prominence. Is it mere coincidence that Duke hasn’t enjoyed a winning season on the gridiron since his return?

The league’s karma seemed to be in full force as basketball practice opened along Tobacco Road.

North Carolina and Duke are enduring miserable football seasons. Through the middle of October, the Blue Devils were winless, while UNC’s only victory was over Division 1-AA Furman. Naturally, those two programs began workouts for the season projected as the ACC’s two preseason favorites.

Roy Williams welcomed four starters and three top reserves back from a team that finished 23-8 and was ranked No. 10 in the final AP poll. The addition of a celebrated five-man freshman class has some pundits projecting the Heels ahead of defending national champion Florida in the preseason polls.

The big question mark in Chapel Hill was about chemistry – how will UNC’s returning veterans handle losing playing time and maybe starting jobs to such highly touted newcomers as point guard Ty Lawson, shooting guard Wayne Ellington and power forward Brandan Wright?

“Realistically, there’s going to be a lot of competition,” said senior returning starter Wes Miller. “But we have a lot of guys with character. And we have coach Williams. I don’t know specifically what he’ll do, but he’ll handle it.”

Williams plans to keep everybody happy by playing the fastest tempo in college basketball. He’ll run and press and trap and run some more – while using 10-12 players in the rotation.

“Our fans are all worried about chemistry,” Williams said. “That’s the last thing I worry about. If this team loses, it will be because somebody beats us, not because we didn’t work or somebody screwed up.”

In truth, UNC football coach John Bunting would love to have Williams’ problems, especially after watching his football team manhandled 56-7 at Clemson and hammered 37-20 at home by South Florida.

Duke fans would rather not think about their football team’s growing losing streak. Instead, they would rather focus on how Krzyzewski will rebuild after losing four seniors, including first-team All-Americans J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams, off a team that won 32 games and ranked No. 1 in the final AP poll.

“I think one of the most interesting things for our team is that none of our guys have really established themselves as who they are at a high level,” Krzyzewski said.

The Blue Devil coach is trying to rebuild around gifted power forward Josh McRoberts and point guard Greg Paulus, two sophomores who started and played key supporting roles a year ago, plus junior DeMarcus Nelson, a talented California guard whose first two seasons have been marred by injuries. To that trio, he’ll add a highly regarded four-man freshman class.

“We really like our freshmen class,” Krzyzewski said. “They’re hard workers and good players. But I’ve coached a lot of freshmen in this league and you have to expect a lot of peaks, but also some valleys.”

If the operative word in Chapel Hill was “chemistry,” the key word in Durham is “leadership.”

“I going to meet with my three captains more – like once a week, once every 10 days – to help them develop leadership and get feel for the team and have better communications – stuff like that,” Krzyzewski said.

Coach K’s plans took a minor hit during the first weekend of practice when his starting point guard went down with a foot injury. Although first reported on the Internet as a broken foot that would require surgery and perhaps a 6-8 week rehab, the injury turned out to be a bit less serious. It will not require surgery and the inside word is for a 3-4 week rehab – which could get Paulus back in time for Duke’s Nov. 12 opener.

In typical ACC fashion, the bad news about Paulus arrived just as the woebegone Duke football team got some good news – its next opponent, Miami, would be without 13 key players who were suspended for their role in an ugly brawl the previous week against Florida International. That’s probably not enough to make the winless Blue Devils favorites or anything, but at least it improves the odds.

In Winston-Salem, Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser welcomed a collection of talented youngsters that he hopes will help the Deacons climb out of the ACC basement. Even that struggle is in keeping with the league’s mania for balance since the Deacons’ fall from grace on the hardwood has been matched by an equally surprising rise on the gridiron. On the same weekend that Prosser began working out his team, Jim Grobe’s Wake Forest football team won for the sixth time in seven games, tying Clemson for the best overall record in the ACC.

That Deacon victory came over N.C. State, which presents even more evidence of the ACC’s weird football/basketball yin/yang.

In the weeks leading up to the opening of basketball practice, Chuck Amato’s football team enjoyed some extraordinary good fortune, pulling out late victories over Boston College and Florida State. It seemed as if those two pieces of good football news had to be balanced by bad basketball news ... and on the Tuesday when first-year coach Sidney Lowe met with the media to discuss the start of preseason practice guess what happened?

First, junior power forward Andrew Brackman, expected to be the Pack’s primary frontcourt weapon, finally confirmed the rumors that had been floating around the Raleigh campus for weeks – he’ll be quitting basketball to concentrate on his considerable future as a baseball pitcher.

“It will be a big loss to us obviously,” Lowe said. “I’m not going to say that the door is closed on this. Andrew likes basketball. Right now he’s concentrating on baseball.”

At the same time as the new N.C. State coach was meeting the press in Raleigh, a prime Wolfpack recruiting target was holding a press conference in Washington, D.C. Point guard Chris Wright, who committed to N.C. State last year then re-opened his commitment when former coach Herb Sendek left for Arizona State, announced that he would sign with Georgetown.

But as soon as the two pieces of bad news balanced the two miraculous football victories, the karmic pendulum swung the other way. Late in the week, Lowe landed a commitment from 6-10 J.J. Hickson of Marietta, Ga. – a surprise decision from the top 25 prospect who was supposed to be leaning toward Tennessee.

Of course, there was a price to be paid. Less than 48 hours after the Wolfpack basketball program got the good news, the football team’s run of good fortune ran out. The Pack was driving for a third straight come-from-behind victory when quarterback Daniel Evans – the hero of the Boston College and FSU wins -- threw a late interception that allowed Wake Forest to hold on for a 25-23 victory.

Coincidence? Or just another example of the ACC’s weird karma?