CBSSports did a conference football ranking, and the ACC was sitting at 4th. The Big 10 was first, the SEC second, and the Big 12 third.
Didn’t the ACC have far more playoff success than the Big 12 the last 2 years? It was just Miami, but the answer is still yes. Didn’t the ACC have a winning record against the SEC in 2025, and a 9-5 bowl record last season? Sure, 2025 was great, but 2024 was a trainwreck.
The author Cody Nagel uses the last 2 years, and that’s fair. He uses mostly H2H results, and even in the opt out bowl era, it’s the metric we have to follow.
So where is the problem for the ACC?
The ACC has a losing record against each of the other three Power Four conferences and owns the lowest winning percentage against the Group of Six. Nine (!!) different ACC teams suffered at least one G6 loss over the past two seasons.
That’s a lot of evidence that the conference’s floor is dragging down its ceiling.
Both the Big 10 and SEC have over a 90% winning percentage against G6 schools. The ACC is at a mere 75%.
This has to change. The ACC is a competitive league, and there are success stories. The league is better than the late 2000s and early 2010s, but it could be so much more if the bottom of the league starts carrying its weight. For years, the lament was that ACC schools couldn’t win big games. There are several of those, but there are too many low-end losses.
We always say the ACC needs to beat P4 teams. That’s obvious, and that happens, but those ugly losses have to stop. In some ways, that might be an even bigger story.
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