How ACC football managed to win no hearts in Week 1

ACC football has developed a reputation for being rather unimpressive in recent memory, and Week 1 somehow failed to change that.

The ACC was given a spectacular count of five teams in the AP Preseason Top 25 to enter this season, placing them in second place for ranked schools amongst the Power Five conferences.

Considering the unspectacular nature of the league as a whole over the past several years, sitting behind only the SEC in the rankings — and by a margin of one school, no less — is no small accomplishment. But, to receive such a respectable level of hype comes with a heap of responsibility attached to it.

Simply put, said responsibility belongs to the act of the ACC proving that its ranked programs are worthy of such a status, and preferably as soon as possible. However, the ways in which each ranked program opened its season failed to make too large of an impact on its perceived formidability for one reason or another.

Of the five teams in the poll (all of which should remain ranked until further notice), Miami and Wake Forest played FCS-level opponents, North Carolina State played a Group of Five one, and Clemson and Pittsburgh both played Power Five ones.

Obviously, some of those games should sound more meaningful than some others, but all five of them either told the college football world nothing or left a helping of concern.

For starters, Miami played Bethune-Cookman while Wake Forest took on VMI. As one could surely imagine, the ACC team in each of those contests won by enormous margins.

But, while that is good news, big-name programs are expected to do just that, as FCS teams play at the level that they do for a reason. In other words, neither of those Atlantic Coast powers will be playing conference opponents as well as we’ve seen them play early on.

As for Clemson and Pittsburgh, they at least faced off against fellow Power 5 universities for their openers. That doesn’t mean that they passed all of their eyeball tests, though.

The Tigers met Georgia Tech on Labor Day and, after a dangerously slow start, eventually put the game away in dominating fashion (as they should have done all along).

Meanwhile, the Panthers hosted the average West Virginia Mountaineers — an old adversary from their Big East days — and won in an all-time classic showdown, just barely holding on to win by a single score. While it is a big game and it’s only the season opener, that being one of the conference’s biggest moments only tells the college football world so much.

The only one that leaves is NC State, which easily had the worst showing of the five ranked ACC schools.

The Wolfpack visited Greenville to take on in-state rival East Carolina of the AAC and, due to multiple missed kicks by ECU’s special teams, the 13th-ranked team in the country (as of Monday night) escaped by a pathetic score of 21-20. With that in mind, it is safe to say that they will most likely not be ranked that high in the upcoming poll.

How did the rest of the ACC do?

When it comes to what all the ACC has done outside of the rankings, there are also very few positives to go off of.

In no particular order of respectability, UNC has already struggled with two non-Power Five opponents more than it should have (the first being Florida A&M in Week 0), Florida State’s play-calling left the Seminoles in serious danger of losing to a visibly-flawed LSU squad, and Boston College couldn’t even manage to beat Rutgers at home. But wait, the fun doesn’t end there.

As for other underwhelming ACC storylines, Virginia only beat Richmond by 17 while Virginia Tech actually lost to Old Dominion — with the latter of the two affairs easily being the league’s darkest hour of the season so far.

Perhaps it’s not all bad, though, as a pair of unlikely Atlantic Coast powers did make surprisingly strong appearances this last weekend: Duke and Syracuse. I know, who would’ve thought?

The Blue Devils beat Temple by an outstanding score of 30-0 while the Orange downed Louisville, 31-7.

Now sure, Temple has been rather terrible as of late, and the ugliness of that Louisville loss makes the Cardinals — who were supposed to help the ACC be somewhat feared — look quite disappointing, but at least it can be said that some members of the conference left absolutely no doubt on the table.

Yet through it all, it has to be said: if those are the two teams headlining the greatness of a league’s football programs, it’s probably only so great of a league, to begin with.

I’m sure that I’m coming off as a downer here, as only four ACC teams have suffered losses over the course of 14 games (with half of them being dealt by the hands of fellow ACC teams).

But nonetheless, the Atlantic Coast Conference has been known for its struggling ways over the past several years, and very little about these first several matchups has concretely indicated that those days are behind it.