For some off-season football reading, we already looked at the ACC’s 25 best Out-of-conference wins of the 2020s. With good comes the bad, though, and ACC programs need to stop losing games they should win. The media is already against the conference; don’t keep giving them fuel for their narratives.
We ranked the ACC’s 50 biggest OOC wins of the 2010s, if you’d like a look at the previous decade.
Games 6-10 | Games 11-15 | Games 16-20
Here we go with the worst OOC losses for an ACC team in the decade.
1. Florida State 17 Jacksonville State 20 – September 11, 2021
It doesn’t get any worse than for Florida State and the ACC. Florida State lost to an FCS school that ended up with a 5-6 record. Jacksonville State threw a game-winning 59-yard pass as time ran out for the stunning victory. It was a nightmare of a loss in every sense of the word for Florida State. The decade has 6 more years, but what are the odds you’ll see a worse loss for an ACC school this decade? I don’t think we’ll see one. Oddly enough, the Noles have the best win of the decade in the ACC too.
2. Virginia Tech 17 Old Dominion 20 – September 3, 2022
Oh this loss for Virginia Tech to Old Dominion was awful when it happened, and just got worse looking as the season continued. Old Dominion went 3-9, and at just 2-6 in the Sun Belt was one of the worst teams in the Sun Belt. The Hokies got outscored 10-0 in the 4th quarter as one of the hallmarks of Virginia Tech football this decade is blowing 4th quarter leads. This was just an embarrassing loss for the league and Virginia Tech. I’m not sure Brent Pry has ever truly recovered from his debut game loss.
3. Pittsburgh 41 Western Michigan 44 – September 18, 2021
Pittsburgh won the ACC and won 11 games, but this was an ugly loss. You can’t have your conference champion losing to a team that finished 4th in the MAC. It’s a really bad look. The Pitt defense gave up over 500 yards on defense, and you felt like Pittsburgh didn’t build off the win at Tennessee the week before. The Panthers recovered after this loss, but the ACC’s better teams need to avoid losses like this in the future.
4. North Carolina 50 James Madison 70 – September 21, 2024
There’s been one consistent theme across the top 10 of the ACC’s worst OOC losses of the decade. Geoff Collins was a coach on the losing end of 3 of the worst 9 losses. There were 2 as Georgia Tech head coach, and this catastrophe as the UNC DC where the Heels defense gave up a whopping 70 points to the 3rd best team from the Sun Belt in James Madison. The Duke scored 53 points in the first half and ended up with over 600 yards for the game. While there are a few games I considered as even worse OOC losses, I can’t name a worse-coached defensive game from an ACC team in the decade. The game was the beginning of the end for Mack Brown’s career at UNC.
5. Miami 31 Middle Tennessee 45 – September 24, 2022
It’s hard to believe Miami came into this game against Middle Tennessee ranked at #25. The Hurricanes were run out of their stadium by an MTSU team that had lost 44-7 earlier in the week to James Madison. Middle Tennessee rolled up over 500 yards of offense in the game and raced out to a 24-3 lead and never looked back. Mario Cristobal got his first true indication that the restoration project at Miami was not going to be an easy one.
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