The Tier 1 order changed exactly where we thought it would three weeks out from the start of ACC college football. Miami continues to hold the top spot with a composite score of 100 but SMU rose from 4th to 2nd and Clemson fell from 2nd to 4th. Louisville continues to hold the number 3 spot and Virginia Tech is at number 5. The new 2-3-4 is a genuine scrum with each of the three teams separated by a whisker.
What drove the change? It wasn’t the media poll, the movement comes entirely from sources you do trust. Since June, the expert magazines all published and they broke against Clemson. Athlon has SMU and Clemson at 2 and 4, Phil Steele lumps SMU, Clemson and Louisville in a three-way tie for 2nd and CBS projects SMU at 2 and Clemson at 4.
The market has Miami as a runaway favorite with Louisville and SMU hitting 8.5 wins and Clemson down at 7.5. Overall, that’s four of five sources pulling for SMU over Clemson. There is a holdout and it’s the SP+ which ranks Clemson at number 2 in the ACC and for that reason alone the Tigers stay as high as 4th instead of sliding further.
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Two months ago the models and the money were at war over second place in the conference. The war’s over. The money won. Here’s the tell that should make Clemson fans nervous. There’s exactly one place left in the country that still ranks the Tigers as the conferences second best team and it’s a computer. Every human that watches football for a living put somebody ahead of them. When the machine is a team’s last defender, that’s usually the machine being slow to a story everyone else already sees.
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Ultimately, because Clemson and SMU don’t play against one another it all comes down to the standings. The early gauntlet at LSU and soon thereafter a face to face with Miami will tell us fast whether the humans were right or the machine was when it comes to ACC college football rankings.
The most divided team on the board is Pitt. Steele has the Panthers at number 5, CBS buries them at 13th and Florida State is the SP+ pet, rated meaningfully higher by the computer than by any human source. The mid-tier teams will announce their arrival (or not) after the first three games of the season.
The preseason US LBM Coaches Poll has Miami at 7, SMU at 20 and Clemson at 23. It’s the Tigers lowest starting position in the poll since 2011. Realistically, they could be bumped out if they lose to number 13 LSU in their opener on Saturday, September 5. Louisville got edged out of 25 by Missouri. A solid win by the Cardinals against Ole Miss in Nashville would likely push them into the Top 25.
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Week Zero sees ACC teams in action on Saturday, August 29. The Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin features North Carolina and TCU. The planned College Football Brasil in Rio de Janeiro between NC State and Virginia has been moved to Charlottesville. New Mexico State takes on Florida State and Hawaii visits Stanford where the Cardinal hope to avenge a 23-20 opening day loss in 2025.
