This week’s game between Virginia and Duke will, essentially, be an elimination contest in the ACC Football race.
Entering this Saturday’s slate of conference games, both Duke (5-4, 4-1 ACC) and Virginia (8-2, 5-1 ACC) are among the five conference teams with one loss.
Virginia, which suffered its first conference loss on Saturday against Wake Forest, will make its first trip to Wallace Wade Stadium since 2022.
“Bloated conferences forever are going to create this situation because everybody can’t play everybody,” Duke coach Manny Diaz said Monday. “And this will not be a unique problem to our league.”
The UVA-Duke game will be the only head-to-head meeting Saturday between the one-loss teams.
The ACC has multiple tiebreakers in place for a two-team or, for heaven’s sake, a three-team or more team tie.
If two teams finish with the same record, the conference first looks at head-to-head results.
However, if the two teams did not face one another, then the tiebreakers get complicated.
Very complicated.
“When you make a thing that we’re going to expand conferences and you don’t pay attention to the unintended consequences, these are the unattended consequences,” Diaz added.
ACC likely to tumble further down the CFP rankings
The top of the ACC suffered ugly losses Saturday, which further diminished the conference’s chance of getting multiple teams into the CFP.
Who exactly is deserving in the ACC?
With Virginia and Louisville both losing at home Saturday, the race for the top two slots in the conference is wide open heading into the home stretch of the season.
And that’s not exactly a good thing for the conference.
The league appears to be a mixed bag of mediocrity, at best, this season, especially after such a promising start.
Remember Florida State’s thumping of Alabama in Week 1, or Miami’s season-opening win over Notre Dame?
The CFP selection committee obviously didn’t, slotting ND eight spots ahead of Miami despite both teams having the same record.
Week 2 of the CFP rankings won’t be kind to the ACC, as it will be a struggle for any team to crack the Top 15.
It’s obvious the CFP selection committee just isn’t that impressed with the current race for the top in the ACC.
‘College GameDay’ coming to Pittsburgh, despite Pitt coach
This weekend, “ESPN College Gameday” will be in Pittsburgh for the first time in 20 years, as the Panthers host #10 Notre Dame.
I’m a bit perplexed about choosing Pittsburgh. In case the folks at ESPN didn’t bother to look, there are plenty of other big games this weekend.
Consider these, for instance: Oklahoma at Alabama, Texas at Georgia.
Maybe it was the ease of traveling from the ESPN headquarters in Connecticut to relatively nearby western Pennsylvania.
Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi, for his part, doesn’t seem to grasp that the University of Pittsburgh is about as low on the totem pole in the Steel City as Boston College is in Beantown.
When asked on Monday if he was looking forward to the spotlight being on his team this weekend, rather than embracing the rare occasion of Pitt Football being meaningful, Narduzzi went the opposite direction: “Absolutely not. It’s not an ACC game; I’d gladly get beaten 103 to 10 or 110 to 10. They (ND) can score 100 on us as long as we win our next two after that.
Note to Narduzzi: Sometimes it’s best to smile, nod, and say nice things, rather than to start talking before your brain activates.
ACC Power Rankings
- Georgia Tech
- Virginia
- SMU
- Pitt
- Louisville
- Miami
- Duke
- Wake Forest
- Cal
- Clemson
- NC State
- North Carolina
- Florida State
- Virginia Tech
- Stanford
- Syracuse
- Boston College