It was a down year for the ACC, but this on-going rhetoric of "awful" is going too far. Many ACC teams started the season with a loss thanks to playing conference games in the first couple of weeks in support of the launch of the ACC Network. Meanwhile, teams in other conferences were getting fat off of cupcake wins. So when conference play began in earnest, those teams had zero or one loss and were ranked. Now that the season is over and everyone has played their full conference schedule, the picture is a bit different...
P5 Teams with 8-4 record or better:
ACC (4): Clemson, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest
Big XII (4): Oklahoma, Baylor, Oklahoma St, Kansas St
Big Ten (7): Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana
Pac-12 (3): Oregon, Utah, USC
SEC (5): Georgia, Florida, LSU, Alabama, Auburn
Independent (1): Notre Dame
Total P5 teams with fewer than 5 losses: 24
source:
https://accfootballrx.blogspot.com/2019/...12119.html
The Big Ten has great depth this year, but the rest are about equal in terms of depth (not trying to compare Auburn to Wake Forest here, but the NUMBER of teams is comparable in every P5 league not named Big Ten). Would I have liked to see more 10-win teams in the ACC? SURE! But 9-3 and 8-4 isn't exactly trash...