Why the ACC Is College Football’s Most Boring Power Conference

Every single year, there is always a debate about which conference is the top one in college football. You have your SEC homers chanting “S-E-C! S-E-C!”, from the top of their lungs, as well as the Big Ten fans who say that the last two national champions have come from their conference. 

Call me biased, but I believe the Big 12 is the best conference in all of college football. Sure, it doesn’t have as many national championships as the Big Ten or the SEC does, and it may not get as many teams into the College Football Playoff, but it is still the best football conference in my eyes.

Before you call me crazy (which is not the worst thing I’ve been called over the years), hear me out: As great as the Big Ten and SEC are when it comes to national championships, take a look at the rest of the conference.

My original plan was to include the Big Ten and SEC in a single article, but I decided to turn this into a series, focusing on each major conference. Today, I take a look at the ACC, which has seen a lot of changes in the past few years.

ACC is Even More Top Heavy Than SEC, Big Ten

When I looked at the Big Ten and SEC, I mentioned how top heavy the two conferences are. The SEC with Georgia and Alabama and then the Big Ten with Michigan and Ohio State. The chances of one of those four teams winning their conference are extremely high and have been for quite some time.

As top heavy as those two conferences are, they fail in comparison to the ACC. Thirteen of the last fourteen conference champions from the ACC have either been Florida State or Clemson. The only school not named Florida State or Clemson to win a conference championship since 2011 was Pittsburgh back in 2021 in that weird post-COVID year.

While I did mention Florida State as an ACC power, they are by no means a finished product. In fact, the Seminoles have just one ACC title in the last ten years. And just look at what they did last season when they went 2-10. It’s not fair to put them in the same category as Clemson, who has won eight out of the last ten ACC championships.

If you look at the preseason predictions, it should be no surprise that Clemson is once again the heavy favorite to win the ACC. Everyone should be used to that by now. It’s like saying water is wet or that snow is cold. The ACC’s problem is that it is predictable and boring.

ACC Football Filled With Duds

Virginia, Pitt, Wake Forest, Syracuse, Georgia Tech, Duke, Virginia Tech, NC State, Boston College, Stanford, and Cal, do any of them excite anyone? Miami and Louisville are somewhat interesting and so is North Carolina with Bill Belichick now. But that isn’t enough to keep my engaged.

Adding Stanford and Cal did next to nothing outside of academics, which no true college football fan cares about. All adding those two schools did was put two more cellar dweller programs in conference that already had a cellar full of them.

Sure, SMU was a nice add last season… but it was one season. I am not ready to crown them as a perennial ACC power just yet. Until another school, or schools, step up, this will be a conference that is Clemson, and everyone else. Or at least until Florida State figures out how to succeed with any kind of consistency.