Clemson Football: The ACC is bad, but it’s not the only down conference

The ACC may be down as a conference, but the idea that only Clemson football hasn’t played anybody all season is certainly laughable.

We’ve heard it all season: Clemson football hasn’t played anybody.

Just scroll through Twitter and you’ll get your fill. There’s a narrative among College Football fans that the Clemson football program gets 13 ‘tune-up’ games each year before the start of the playoff.

Somehow, that gives the Tigers an unfair advantage when the postseason comes around. We’ve heard the same tired narrative since Clemson obliterated Alabama 44-16 in last season’s National Championship.

While it’s fair to say the ACC is down, two things are not fair:

• To act as if it’s Clemson fault that the conference is bad
• To act as if the conference is that much worse than other conferences around the nation

It’s become the popular trend to make fun of the ACC and pretend that is somehow discredits Clemson football. The truth, however, is that it’s not the Tigers’ fault the conference is down. Clemson competed and went undefeated back in 2015 when the ACC was one of the toughest conferences in the nation. The Tigers have won all of their games and that should be credited to them.

However, when you look at the ACC, people act as if the whole conference is terrible. While there is no surefire No. 2 team in the conference, the bottom of the league is much better than the bottom of most any other league in the country. But because there isn’t a legitimate threat to Clemson, all of a sudden, the entire league is just terrible.

How about this?

Wake Forest (7-2), Virginia Tech (6-3) and Virginia (6-3) would all likely be ranked if you replaced their names with ‘Florida,’ ‘Oklahoma State,’ and ‘Iowa.’ Though Wake Forest, Virginia Tech and Virginia could compete with the likes of those three programs, they don’t get any respect from the committee because they are in the ACC.

It’s like a never-ending cycle. As a matter of fact, it’s the same cycle that allows the SEC to continue to have teams ranked near the top of the ranking. Because Florida only lost to Georgia, the Gators don’t drop from the rankings. But because Wake Forest lost to Virginia Tech, the Demon Deacons move out of the rankings- and the Hokies don’t move in.

People tend to forget that the Hokies lost by one point to No. 16-ranked Notre Dame, just pointing that out as an example.

This post isn’t to advocate that the ACC is one of the best conferences in the nation. We’ve clearly stated that the conference is down and is lacking presence- especially from programs like Florida State and Miami- to become nationally relevant.

However, to say that Clemson playing Louisville, Florida State, UNC and NC State is somehow less difficult than Alabama playing Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Arkansas and Texas A&M is laughable. The Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC all have teams ranked that don’t deserve to be ranked, or teams that are vastly overrated.

The only difference is that the ACC is the conference that seems to get punished for those. Many of these ACC program would be considered ranked teams if they had a different brand name, but because they’re not an SEC or Big Ten program, they’re automatically disqualified or ‘less than.’ It’s that never-ending cycle of bolstering teams in the rankings based off of preseason expectations and traditional brands.