The last few years it’s been hard to find positives for ACC football after the bowl season.
The ACC could have used a credible bowl season. Sure with all the opt-outs, transfers, and COVID results you can argue that you can’t make sweeping generalizations about a conference good or bad, but results are results.
And they weren’t so strong for the ACC again. ACC Teams went 2-4 when at the very least they should have gone .500.
From close losses to blowouts, ACC teams found a way to lose them all.
Maybe the conference should have just opted out of the entire post-season.
Looking back at 2019, and with Clemson losing the title game it was actually 4-7 after that article.
With the bowl season going on the last 2 weeks, we’ve been mostly focused on the game results. With a 4-6 bowl record, it hasn’t been a stellar bowl season for the ACC.
It was all the way back in 2018, the last time the ACC had a winning bowl record before this year’s 5-4 finish.
The results were close to being great, but the ACC should take respectable.
Overall the subtle signs of an improved league were there all year. Florida State beat SEC West Champion LSU, and Syracuse beat Big 10 West Champion Purdue. Louisville beat 9 win Central Florida and NC State got a win over a decent Texas Tech team. Let’s not forget Pittsburgh took playoff caliber Tennessee to OT.
During bowl season Wake Forest beat Missouri, Florida State defeated Oklahoma, Duke had a win over Central Florida too. Louisville beat Cincinnati and Pittsburgh produced the ACC’s second-best win of the season over #18 UCLA.
In the first couple of years of the 2020s we could barely list any credible OOC Wins for the ACC, and that’s notable.
Eight teams won at least 8 games, and there will be two teams that finish in the top 15 – Florida State and Clemson.
The resurgence of a national brand like Florida State is certainly a positive for the league.
That doesn’t mean the conference didn’t leave plenty of room for improvement.
Clemson while they won the ACC, flopped on the biggest OOC stages – losing to every decent OOC team they played – Notre Dame, Tennessee and a 5 loss South Carolina team. That’s not what you want to see from your ACC Champion.
The conference has now gone 3 years without a Big 6 Bowl win, and two years without a playoff team. That’s very BCS-eraesque.
There were still some unsightly OOC losses like Miami getting thumped at home Middle Tennessee State. Clemson losing to South Carolina at home was ugly, plus the conference going winless to a Notre Dame team that couldn’t beat Stanford or Marshall.
Overall though it wasn’t a bad season in ACC Football, and certainly better than the last three years.
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