David Pollack Reveals Biggest Question Mark About the ACC in 2025 originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
The expansion of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams allows for the five highest-rated conference champions to receive automatic bids.
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While this doesn’t guarantee participation, it benefits the Power Four conferences, as their champions are likely to secure a spot each season. One of these conferences is the ACC. Last season, the Clemson Tigers captured the conference title with a last-second field goal against the SMU Mustangs, who had won the regular season crown.
There is considerable excitement surrounding Clemson’s potential to repeat as champion in the upcoming season. On his podcast, “See Ball Get Ball with David Pollack,” former Georgia Bulldog David Pollack expressed his belief that Clemson will win the ACC. However, he raised a more significant question about the conference as a whole.
Clemson Tigers kicker Nolan Hauser (81) makes a 56-yard field goal as time expires to win the ACC Championship Game against the SMU Mustangs.© Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
“The bigger question about this league is who the heck do you pick next,” Pollack said. “Because I think it’s a roulette game.”
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Pollack noted that Clemson has won the conference title in eight of the last 10 seasons, with seven of those championships coming against different opponents. The only team to face Clemson twice in that period was the North Carolina Tar Heels. Therefore, historical trends suggest it is unlikely the SMU Mustangs will be the team Clemson defeats in the upcoming season, just as they did last year.
ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) is designed to measure team strength and serves as a reliable predictor of a team’s performance. It indicates how many points a team is expected to perform above or below the average.
The FPI does not rank Clemson as the best team in the conference; instead, it places the Tigers at No. 2, just behind the Miami Hurricanes. While FPI gives Miami a slight advantage, it predicts both teams will end up with nearly identical records. However, it does give Clemson a marginally better chance of winning the conference, with probabilities of 34% for Clemson and 30.5% for Miami.
The FPI has a clear prediction for the participants in the ACC Championship Game, favoring Clemson and Miami, which has high expectations after narrowly missing the conference title game last year. This offseason, Miami added former Georgia Bulldogs quarterback Carson Beck to their roster.
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In his two seasons as the starting quarterback, Beck threw for 7,426 yards, 52 touchdowns and 18 interceptions. However, he sustained a season-ending elbow injury during the SEC Championship Game last year, and that has affected his offseason preparation.
If he can recover from this injury, he has the potential to be a formidable contender in the ACC.
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 11, 2025, where it first appeared.