On Saturday Night, the College Football Playoff committee unveiled its Top 25 rankings, giving us our first look at the potential College Football Playoff picture. In College Basketball, when the NCAA Tournament rolls around, a ton of discussion occurs over how many bids each conference gets into the tournament. The discussion has made its way to College Football with the Playoff expanding to 12 teams.
In the first College Football Playoff rankings, the SEC leads the way with 4 bids, the Big Ten has 3, and the Big 12 has 2 bids while Notre Dame, the Group of 5, and the ACC each get 1 bid. Most of the conferences will be happy with their pull while the ACC needs to do some reflecting.
The ACC's damage shows in the College Football Playoff rankings
When you look at the fact that even the Big 12 has become a projected multi-bid league, the ACC has to look in the mirror and wonder why they're in a place where only 1 team will make the Playoff. The ACC doesn't even have a dominant force, as they'd be left out if this were the best 12 teams, but instead the 14th-ranked Virginia Cavaliers are let in because the 4 highest-ranked Conference Champions would earn a bid.
The blame in the ACC should land on the two schools that sued the league in Florida State and Clemson. Florida State sued the ACC after being snubbed from the Playoff, and ever since that moment, the Seminoles have turned into a laughing stock. The Clemson Tigers were the golden child for the ACC for years when Dabo Swinney was winning National Championships, but those days are far gone.
The Miami Hurricanes deserve a ton of blame, too, as this team has more NFL-level talent than anyone in the ACC, yet Mario Cristobal's team has fallen apart. Miami should've been the ACC's easy bid into the Playoff this season, especially with the style in which they started the season. Instead, at 18th in the rankings, the Hurricanes are going to need a ton of help to get back into the debate.
The ACC is considered one of the Power 4, but as teams like Clemson and Florida State have become broken programs, they're going to need to find a way to start pushing their way toward earning multiple bids. The number of bids each team gains will start to become a recruiting pitch for every league, and the last thing the ACC can afford is becoming an afterthought.