The ACC didn’t get much love from the voters on the first college football rankings of the new season. Only three teams made it into the Associated Press’ preseason top 25, with defending national runnerup Miami – at No. 7 – the only one to crack the top 10. SMU at No. 19 and Louisville at No. 24 are the others.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The ACC has forever been on the wrong side of the battle of perception when it comes to the national media, a situation compounded by the fact that the conference often has trouble getting out of its own way.
If there’s any consolation to this latest lack of respect, it’s the fact that nobody has played any games yet and that the national championship will eventually be won on the field under the current College Football Playoff system. And that thanks to the advent of automatic qualifiers, the ACC is guaranteed at least one spot in the bracket.
Even if it’s Duke again.
That makes the preseason poll little more than a popularity contest. It’s as meaningless as the voting for a high school homecoming king and queen. Teams from the SEC, Big Ten and Notre Dame are the cool kids who dominate the list of candidates while the Band Nerds and Mathletes from the ACC get a couple of compulsory spots on the list just to show that everyone is included.
But even amid that context, there is one significant development to come out of the recently released rankings. For the first time in 15 seasons, Clemson isn’t in them.
The Tigers came close to sneaking in. Their 112 points put them first among the “Others receiving votes” and only five points away from surpassing No. 25 Missouri and sneaking into the poll. Even that would have been noteworthy, since Clemson starting the season among the nation’s top 10 has been as much a harbinger of fall as the arrival of pumpkin spice everything at Starbucks and the shelves of your favorite grocery.
Considering that the Tigers’ six losses last season are more than they compiled in the five years combined between 2016-20, their omission isn’t exactly a surprise. Even Dabo Swinney saw it coming a month ago at the ACC’s Football Kickoff media event in Charlotte.
“We’ve had 13 ten-plus win seasons, 14 nine-plus win seasons, we’ve won 11 championships in the last 15 years and then you have a season like last year, everybody wants to focus on,” he said. “I get that. We earned that.”
Like any good coach, Swinney will publicly dismiss the poll omission. But you better believe that behind the closed doors of his locker room, he’ll bring it up often as a motivational tool with his players.
From the sound of things, it’s already lit a fire under the fiery Tigers coach.
“This year, ain’t none of y’all going to pick us. Ain’t none of y’all going to say anything good about us,” he told the gathered group of media members in Charlotte, several of whom vote on the AP poll. “I’ve been dead. I’m gone. I think I’m still here, all right? But it’s not about that either. It never has been.
“If it was about what people predicted, I would have been gone a long time ago. It’s about what you do. We didn’t do the football stuff well enough last year. We’ve got everything we need. We don’t make any excuses. We’re going to get what we earn this year. That’s what we’re focused on, doing what it takes to earn the results that we want.”
The laundry list of “football stuff” Swinney acknowledged “needs to be fixed” includes a running game that went nowhere fast, a pass defense with more holes than a golf course and a quarterback issue that becomes more of a concern with each day that passes without a starter being named.
With LSU at that other Death Valley on the opening week schedule, it won’t take long to find out how well Swinney and his revamped staff have done their jobs this offseason.
In the great scheme of things, that one game won’t be a determining factor in the ultimate success or failure of Clemson’s season. The Tigers did, after all, go on to an ACC championship after getting embarrassed by Georgia in its opener two seasons ago.
And yet for better or for worse, their performance at LSU will inevitably be viewed as a referendum on Swinney’s assertion that his program isn’t as far away from returning to prominence as its recent record might suggest.
A win or even a close loss will catapult Clemson right back into its familiar spot in the national rankings. A loss of any significance, however, would almost certainly be fuel for the “experts” to say “I told you so” and continue piling on – even if the Tigers go on to win an ACC they’ve already dismissed as inferior.
Not that Swinney has any concern over what they say or think.
“We’re focused on doing what it takes to earn the results that we want,” he said. “These guys have been working toward that, but, you know, it’s not about what we say. Haters hate, right? But the one thing about haters is that when you win, it don’t matter what they say. And when you lose, it don’t matter what you say. So don’t focus on that.
“Let’s focus on getting better. This is a new year. We’re excited about it. Hey, we put our heads down and see if we can find a way to win some games.”