Between 1992 and 2020, the ACC produced five national champions and five more that lost in the national title game. Across those 29 seasons on the gridiron, the conference had at least one team finish in the SP+ top eight on 22 occasions (76%).
This run of high-end contending was bookended by Florida State and Clemson.
The Noles entered the ACC from the indy ranks in 1992 and went on an ungodly heater. Bobby Bowden’s war machine amassed a 70-2 conference record between 1992-2000, finished in the AP top five every single season and won two national titles in ’93 and ’99.
On the back end, Clemson took flight after decades of coming up short. The Tigers replaced the word “Clemsoning” with a six-year run that saw Dabo Swinney and company win 94% of their conference games (46-3) and hang a pair of national championship banners in 2016 and 2018.
In between the legendary runs from FSU and Clemson, Maryland, Miami and Virginia Tech filled in some of the gaps with occasional greatness. The ACC wasn’t a top-to-bottom football factory — far from it — but it usually had one team in the national title hunt deep into November.
But times are changing, and after nearly three decades of consistent play at the top, the ACC is sputtering. Actually, it’s worse than that. The conference is losing altitude, and its former flag bearers are frantically searching for their parachutes.
Let’s just skip past the media rights fiasco and the legal battles unfolding between Clemson, FSU and the ACC, and just focus on the good news.
The conference hasn’t produced an SP+ top-eight team in three years, and last year’s best team — Florida State at ninth — returns just eight starters in total.
The Noles will also face a consensus top-30 schedule that includes a nonconference tussle with a top Group of Five program in Memphis and a road trip to South Bend in November to face Notre Dame. Toss in ACC roadies against Miami, SMU and Duke, and the schedule has enough potholes to leave this Seminole bandwagon in a ditch.
Clemson, likewise, has a challenging slate that ranks 26th by ESPN’s FPI. It starts with a neutral-site showdown against Georgia and consistently offers up landmines like a home game against Appalachian State, road trips to FSU and Virginia Tech, and the annual Palmetto Bowl against South Carolina.
Clemson returns just two starters on defense and didn’t use the portal to address any major needs like the glaring one it has at wide receiver. There’s absolutely a world in which both Clemson and Florida State drop three games or more.
If that does happen and the ACC’s automatic bid (and likely first-round bye) is up for grabs in 2024, which teams are best positioned to nab it? Let's dive into my favorite ACC picks and futures for 2024.
Miami Hurricanes
NC: +6000 · ACC: +440 · CFP: +210
There’s a lot to like about the Canes in 2024.
For starters, Mario Cristobal has remained an elite recruiter, and as a result, this Canes roster is loaded with potential stars. From a "Blue Chip Ratio" perspective, Miami ranks 12th nationally with 61% of its roster receiving four or five stars during its recruitment.
The Hurricanes grabbed arguably the top transfer portal options at both quarterback and running back in Washington State's Cam Ward and Oregon State's Damien Martinez.
Ward is certainly the most accomplished college passer in this year’s portal class. He passed for nearly 7,000 yards and 48 touchdowns in his two seasons at Washington State and was a Walter Payton Award Finalist at Incarnate Word before that.
Martinez, another Pac-2 defector, finished second in the Pac-12 last season in breakaway runs of 15 yards or more. He’s a load to take down at 235-plus pounds. He broke a tackle every 3.4 carries last fall, a higher clip than the reigning Doak Walker winner Ollie Gordon II (4.15 carries/broken tackle).
Defensively, the Canes wisely hired Lance Guidry away from Marshall during the 2023 hiring cycle, and it’s already paying dividends.
Miami improved significantly in terms of scoring and total defense last season. It shaved four points off its per-game average last fall (22.8 PPG) and improved by over 40 spots nationally in terms of total defense (24th, 321.6 YPG).
I expect this upward trend to continue given the returning experience in the front seven. Simeon Barrow arrives from East Lansing to anchor the Canes' defensive line, Rueben Bain will continue to harass passers off the edge and Francisco Mauigoa is a tackle-for-loss machine at middle linebacker after recording 18 a season ago.
The secondary has experience, both in Orange and Green and from the portal.
First, how did Miami score so many quality players out of the portal? Its Canes Collective is well-resourced and organized. If you visit the Hurricanes' official roster you can pay players as easily as ordering from Uber Eats.
Daryl Porter Jr., a returning starter at cornerback, has six NIL buttons on his roster bio, ranging from social media shoutouts and autographs to live appearances and pitching products. This clearly matters to student-athletes in 2024.
While Cristobal and his staff have this NIL/roster-building thing down cold, we’ll see if they can finally start winning close games this fall with this talent-infused roster. The Canes went 1-4 in games decided by seven or less last season, and that will likely be the difference between a CFP appearance and a minor bowl game this time around.
Their schedule is ideal within ACC play, hosting Virginia Tech and Florida State while avoiding NC State. Even their long, cross-country road trip to Cal is followed by a bye week.
There won’t be any reasonable excuses for anything less than a 10-2 regular-season campaign if everyone stays healthy.
NC State Wolfpack
NC: +10000 · ACC: +600 · CFP: +475
It’s easy to get excited about the Wolfpack when considering their ceiling on offense.
NC State returns four starters along the offensive line, a serious contender for the Paul Hornung Award (given to the nation's most versatile player) and a transfer portal quarterback who has thrown for 10,000 yards while winning 32 games as a starter.
Grayson McCall, a three-time Sun Belt Player of the Year, is reminiscent of a four-year starting point guard. No matter what the defense throws at him, he knows exactly how to react and how to facilitate for his teammates. He’s the sixth-most efficient passer in the history of the sport and has run for over 1,100 yards and 18 touchdowns in 40 career starts.
Kevin "KC" Concepcion was the only player in college football last season to eclipse 750 receiving yards and 250 rushing yards. He has a chance to be the Wolfpack's first All-American wide receiver since Torry Holt in 1998.
If the offense takes a major step forward, can NC State’s defense find a way to replace All-American Payton Wilson at linebacker? He was a heart-and-soul kind of player and was another coach on the field for Tony Gibson’s 3-3-5 defense.
Luckily for NC State, its secondary is buttoned up and returns three starters and an athletic freak in Brandon Cisse. If the front three can generate any pass rush, this should be a top-40 pass defense this fall — one year after ranking 52nd.
Early-season games against Tennessee (in Charlotte) and at Clemson will test this new defense. If it can get an early split against the Vols and Tigers, the schedule opens up significantly after late September. The Wolfpacks’ opponents from Sept. 28 onward have an average rank of 65th, according to the KFord Ratings.
Virginia Tech Hokies
NC: +30000 · ACC: +1200 · CFP: +950
Only 32 teams return the “five most important people" inside their facility. That means they have continuity at head coach, both coordinator positions, strength and conditioning coach and starting quarterback. The Hokies are one of those 32 teams and return 17 starters and both specialists.
This is a veteran team that added depth and a potential star to its defense via the portal. Duke’s Aeneas Peebles transferred to Tech and was completely unblockable at defensive tackle during spring ball.
All of this experience would be for nothing if it weren’t for Kyron Drones, VT’s best starting quarterback in ages. The dual-threat either ran for 70-plus yards or achieved a QBR north of 90 in eight of his 13 starts last season.
By season’s end, the Hokie running game was absolutely humming. Virginia Tech ran for more than 250 yards in three of its last four games, including a 362-yard outburst against Tulane in the Military Bowl.
Then there’s the schedule that will allow the Hokies to build momentum.
Early road trips to Vanderbilt and Old Dominion will be nothing more than warmups before they head to Miami on Sept. 27. If they upset the Canes, you can bet that their Nov. 9 showdown with Clemson will be too tempting for "College GameDay" to pass up.
They avoid Florida State, NC State and Louisville on this schedule. Considering the fact that the Seminoles, Wolfpack and Cardinals beat Virginia Tech by a combined score of 108-48, you can’t really ask for a better path to the ACC Championship.
In the instant gratification era, we’ve lost track of the program builder’s critical Year 3 season. Brent Pry has been carefully reshaping this Hokies roster after inheriting a mess from Justin Fuente. The Hokies suffered through three losing seasons in a four-year stretch at the end of the Fuente era, something that hadn’t happened in Blacksburg since the late 1970s.
The Lane Stadium crowd has been starving for a contender, and they have one with a potential All-ACC quarterback leading the way.
It’ll take everything breaking right to win the ACC, but at these prices, you need to consider a play on the Hokies before the secret is out.
