Conference Power Rankings: Big Ten Better than Expected in Week 1
5. ACC
If you take out the Virginia Cavaliers playing UCLA close, the ACC had about nothing going for it over the weekend in comparison to other conferences. It got off on the wrong foot immediately with Wake Forests’s 17-10 loss to Louisiana Monroe Thursday night, and things didn’t look any better Friday night after Syracuse needed two overtimes, a fake field goal conversion, and a failed two-point conversion attempt to beat Villanova, an FCS school, at home.
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Saturday rolled around, and the conference took a step up with Virginia’s win, but that was it. N.C. State had to rally to beat a Georgia Southern team 24-23 that is a decent non-Power Five school and upset Florida last year but still shouldn’t be good enough to be in games like that. Clemson, meanwhile, looked like it didn’t belong on the same field with Georgia as the second half broke out in the biggest game of the weekend for the conference.
And then there’s Florida State, the juggernaut of the conference, who struggled to put away what is supposed to be a middle-of-the-pack Big 12 team on a neutral field. There was nothing to redeem that in the conference over the weekend, so that’s why it is at No. 5.