Is ACC football eliminating itself from playoff contention?

So far this season, ACC football is already looking like what the Pac-12 has been over the past several years. In other words, the ACC is officially on its way to becoming a full-on cannibal conference.

What makes a league a “cannibal conference” is the tendency to have its teams beat other members of it to the point where, by the conclusion of the regular season, all powers have such weakened resumes that none of them are eligible to make the playoff bracket.

Unfortunately, the ACC truly seems to be practicing this exact self-destructive habit, and we are only four weeks into the slate.

Both the Clemson Tigers and the North Carolina Tar Heels were expected to be top teams in the Atlantic Coast, yet they have each dropped half of their first four games. While Clemson fell to NC State in double-overtime, the Heels fell to Georgia Tech — this was after the Tigers had already lost to Georgia and UNC had failed to top Virginia Tech.

Typically, two or more losses wipe a team off of the lineup for playoff eligibility, so if that unwritten rule also holds true this year, then the presumed king and queen of the ACC are out of the way for any concerned College Football Playoff hopefuls from the other Power Five leagues.

Meanwhile, any other realistic options for the conference to utilize as representation in the bracket have appeared to have fallen by the wayside as well. Miami? Two losses before even entering league play. Florida State? One of only two winless teams in the Power Five (the other being Arizona).

How about the aforementioned ACC guys who downed the Tigers and Tar Heels; are they worthy? Nope. Virginia Tech already has a loss to an unranked West Virginia and a visible struggle “win” against FCS-level Richmond. Meanwhile, Georgia Tech already has a pair of Ls, and North Carolina State previously suffered a costly loss to Mississippi State of the SEC.

However, through all the fog of mediocrity, there are two unbeatens left; two absolute powerhouses that rule the Atlantic Coast with an iron fist. And those two teams are… Wake Forest and Boston College.

Look, I love to see the Deacs and Eagles win as much as the next guy, but them being the heads of the league, considering their historical places in the college football food chain, actually make it look that much worse. When you have a supergroup consisting of big names like Clemson, Florida State, and Miami, you have to give the fans something better than a combined record of 4-8 — that just doesn’t cut it. And besides, what are the chances that either Wake or Boston College dominate to such a degree that they stand a chance of seeing the big stage anyway?

Like most other Power Five conferences, the ACC has never managed to sneak more than one representative into the bracket at one time. With that in mind, Clemson (who has sat at the table for its last six installments) was the only Atlantic Coast power that was truly believed to have a shot.

But with them and several others out of the running so early into the season, the ACC might just now be as bad as most folks have been saying it is.