The conference’s coaches, athletic directors and Commissioner Jim Phillips will say the ACC is deep because its teams keep beating one another.
Like SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee has done numerous times since joining the conference, they’ll ask why the SEC and Big Ten are rewarded with extra at-large College Football Playoff bids for inter-league competition while other conferences are punished.
But as positive of a narrative as the ACC tries to give this season, it’s frankly been a mess. No matter which way conference officials try to spin it, no one’s being fooled into believing California and Wake Forest are Vanderbilt and Texas.
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The ACC may be a one-bid league, at best, this year when it comes to the College Football Playoff. At worst, there’s a scenario where a 5-4 Duke team with one conference loss wins the ACC championship game and ends ranked lower than two Group of Five champions. The College Football Playoff takes the top-five ranked conference champions, and the ACC could miss out altogether.
It’s unlikely, but that devastating outcome for the ACC is a possibility.
Each week the conference plays, its situation gets more chaotic. Not only have blue bloods Clemson, Florida State and Miami become essentially irrelevant, but its new frontrunners — Louisville, Georgia Tech and Virginia — have all lost within the last two weeks.
This week, Wake Forest upset No. 14 Virginia, and California upset No. 15 Louisville, leaving five teams tied atop the standings with one conference loss.
At this point in the season, chaos is bad for the ACC. With the conference rivaling the Big 12 as the runt of Power 4, Phillips probably hopes a ranked Georgia Tech or Pittsburgh team will cruise to the title to give the league its best CFP chances.
But for an SMU team that has partaken in its fair share of chaos this season, the last few weeks have been welcome mayhem for the Mustangs.
Saturday was the best-case scenario for SMU, whose ACC title game hopes turned from a slight glimmer to a growing possibility in a matter of weeks.
Georgia Tech was idle, so not much could change there. But Louisville, SMU’s next opponent, proved beatable, and Virginia suffered its first conference loss. The Cavaliers’ loss also came to Wake Forest, the same ACC team SMU lost to, which could help in conference tiebreaker situations down the line.
Meanwhile, as the conference continued to fall apart, SMU had its most convincing win of the season. Its defense forced four turnovers and three turnovers on downs, while its offense totaled 574 yards in spite of nearly 100 yards in penalties. The Mustangs demolished Boston College 45-13 on the road for their first no-nonsense win in quite a few weeks.
“Really proud of how the offense responded in the second half, and obviously, the defense played a complete game,” Lashlee said, “It’s the first time we’ve been balanced and looked how we wanted to look this year.”
Now, the Mustangs enter a bye week after a 5-1 stretch where they’ll watch the chaos from the comfort of their couches. They’ll root for the Boston College team they just beat to secure its first win after nine straight losses when it faces Georgia Tech. They’ll also root for Duke, which lost to UConn last week, to hand Virginia its second straight loss.
The Mustangs will also have extra time to prepare for their most difficult remaining opponent, knowing no week in the ACC has been easy this year.
But the conference’s chaos has made it possible for SMU to play spoiler and end up back in Charlotte in a month’s time.
On Twitter/X: @Lassimak
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