ACC Football 2018: Which power conference will be left out of playoff?

Half of the season is over, and we are starting to see some conference leaders. Will ACC football teams be shut out from the playoff?

One (or maybe two) power conferences will be left out of the College Football Playoff again. Which conference will it be? My bet — the ACC. The Pac-12 is still getting its sea legs, but it’s likely that the Western teams will also be left out of the playoff.

Right now, West Virginia is the best team in the Big 12, but quarterback Will Grier looked a bit shaky on Saturday and their defense was kind of terrible. You expect better than prevent defense from a top-10 team. I mean, they had every dang player on coverage and still choked on the first down on third-and-15.

Grier threw three interceptions, and that’s just against Kansas. The Mountaineers have a whole lot of season left, with Texas, Oklahoma and a feisty Iowa State still on the slate. Grier needs to quell his aggressive tendencies and watch the mistakes, because Texas and Oklahoma will easily capitalize on them.

Yes, Texas is looking great, but that early loss to Maryland may hurt the Longhorns. Texas should finish the season with a bang, but the Big 12 has a marked tendency to cannibalize itself.  Both Texas and West Virginia have a whole lot of football left to play, and if West Virginia wins out, they will most likely secure a place.

The mayhem will come if the Mountaineers lose to Oklahoma but win the rest of their games. That would leave Texas and West Virginia to play for the Big 12 title. You know that if Texas wins that game they will gain a playoff berth, if only because insane Texas fans will probably storm the CFP committee’s offices if they don’t.

For the Big Ten, Ohio State is playing even better than expected, and SEC contenders Alabama and Georgia are cruising to an inevitable showdown in Atlanta. Yes, I know that Georgia still must play a nasty four-game stretch with LSU, Florida, Kentucky and Auburn in order. The Bulldogs are looking even better than last year, though. If both ‘Bama and Georgia win out, we could see another year with two SEC teams in the CFP.

The wild card in all this CFP talk? Notre Dame. It may not be fair, but let’s face it, if the Irish win the rest of the season there is no way they are getting left out of the CFP. The rest of Notre Dame’s schedule, while challenging, shouldn’t be anything that they can’t handle. Sure, Navy and Syracuse are going to be scrappy, but if the Irish keep playing at the tempo they showed on Saturday, there’s nobody left to take them down.

You know Ohio State isn’t getting left out if they win, so that leaves the ACC out in the cold, particularly if Clemson loses to either NC State — a very real possibility — or South Carolina. I’m not naysaying Clemson’s talent, but Syracuse had them on the ropes and NC State is a better football team than the Orange.

There are still six weeks left of regular season play, and there are going to be a ton of upsets and a great deal of chaos. However, it’s the season’s midpoint and we have a good barometer of where most teams are heading. It’ll be fun to see how it all shakes out.