The Indisputable Power Ranking of the 7 Different ACC Coastal Champions
Clemson, vanquishers of the ACC Coastal since December 2015
It’s the day of the college football playoff and bowl game reveal and this is where we usually reserve space for a post mortem on the playoff committee’s decision-making, hemming and hawing over at least one of the teams that were deemed worthy of competing for the title. But, for the second straight year, the committee got it right! Oklahoma has been unconvincing pretty much all year went but fought off numerous close calls to win their conference, and there’s no question they have a superior resume to PAC-12 champions Oregon, or SEC runners-up Georgia and Florida. LSU is a deserving number one team, with four victories over Top 12 teams on its CV, the latest of which, a destruction of #4 Georgia in front of a mostly Bulldog crowd to claim the SEC crown, might have been its most impressive one yet. The gap between them and Ohio State and Clemson is infinitesimal, if existent at all, which should mean we’re in for a very fun playoff.
So, with no real bones to pick with this year’s playoff, we’re gonna instead take this time to reflect on a division that has not produced and may not ever produce a playoff team: the bizarre, ugly, wonderful ACC Coastal. Last night, Clemson won the ACC Championship. Sorry, let me elaborate: last night, Clemson won the ACC Championship by beating Virginia 62-17 (for reference, that’s more points than Virginia’s basketball team scored today in a WIN over North Carolina). Sorry, let me elaborate: last night, Clemson won their unparalleled 5th straight ACC Championship, and the Atlantic Division's 9th straight victory in the title game.
Yes, it's been nearly a decade of futility for the ACC Coastal, the undisputed jewel of the college football landscape. And unless someone (Virginia Tech or North Carolina appear to be the early favorites) makes unheard-of strides over the offseason to match Clemson's quality, it will almost surely be a full decade of futility this time next year. The beleaguered division, who features 3 of the last 5 college basketball national champions but 0 of the last 19 college football national champions, has many detractors across the country, fans of other programs who decry the Coastal as being too weak to be considered a "Power 5" division, who claim that their team, be it Auburn or Colorado State, would surely have at least a 10-win season if they were to play in the ACC Coastal. But fie upon them, for they know little of the unrivaled intensity and grit of the weekly battles in the most competitive division in college football. That's right, I said it: most competitive. For what the ACC Coastal may lack in bonafide title contenders, it compensates for-- and then some! -- in absolute entertainment. Since the dawn of Florida State's "Jameis and Jimbo" Era, every week of every season has been a carousel in the race to qualify for the ACC Championship.
This has never been so abundantly clear as the end of this season, wherein Virginia's win over Virginia Tech in the final week of the season sealed the ACC Coastal's 7th different division champion in 7 years, the first division in college football to have every single team win its crown at least once ever, let alone in successive years. So we want to mark this glorious, landmark achievement by telling you about all seven ACC Coastal Division Champions dating back to 2013, in order from bad to almost-good*:
*Note: all Records and Ranks are representative of the team's standing entering the ACC Championship Game
7. Pittsburgh (2018)
Record: 7-5 (6-2 ACC)
BCS/CFP Rank: Unranked
Championship Game: Lost 10-42 to #2 Clemson
Bowl Game: Lost Sun Bowl 13-14 to Stanford
A couple facts to explain just how bad the Coastal division was in 2018: though all but one of its teams went to a bowl game, none of its teams finished the regular season with more than 7 wins. Its preseason favorite (Miami) started the year ranked in the Top 10, and finished with a 6-6 record, while Virginia Tech had to schedule an additional game against lightweights Marshall during conference championship week just so they could become bowl eligible. That one team who didn't go to a bowl was North Carolina, whose sole conference win came over...Pittsburgh, who ultimately won the division. Thus, it is no surprise that 7-5 Pittsburgh, who played well enough down the season's stretch to become the kings of mediocre mountain, entered the ACC Championship unranked and proceeded to have their brakes beaten off by eventual national champions Clemson.
6. Virginia (2019)
Record: 9-3 (6-2 ACC)
BCS/CFP Rank: #23
Championship Game: Lost 17-62 to #3 Clemson
Bowl Game: vs. #9 Florida in Orange Bowl, result TBD (but probably a Loss)
This past weekend was probably the first instance in this seven-year stretch where the final score of the championship game was a little unflattering to the Coastal representative. Of course Virginia was going to get blown out by Clemson: well-coached though they might be, they didn't have anything close to the level of the Tigers' talent even before losing several key parts on defense to injury. Yet for about the first 20 minutes of game time, they actually hung pretty tough. This showed the grit of the Cavaliers that had been present in key wins over ranked conference foes Florida State and Virginia Tech, and a competitive loss to Notre Dame. Then, all the wheels fell off, and Clemson took full advantage of the part of the Cavaliers that allowed them to lose to a mediocre Miami team and rebuilding Louisville team, and struggle with a downright bad Georgia Tech team. If Virginia somehow rights the ship and stuns Florida in the Orange Bowl, they will have earned a jump of a couple spots in these power rankings, but it is far more likely that another blowout is headed their way, and that tells us about all we need to know, right?
5. Duke (2013)
Record: 10-2 (6-2 ACC)
BCS/CFP Rank: #20
Championship Game: Lost 7-45 to #1 Florida State
Bowl Game: Lost Chick-fil-A Bowl 48-52 to #20 Texas A&M
It's easy to forget the team that set this Coastal chaos into motion back in 2013 was Duke. Yes, Duke Football. A year or two before Coach K was buying recruits to stock his one-and-done basketball factory vanity project, David Cutcliffe was completing his rebuild of the Duke football program by securing the team's first-ever ACC Championship appearance. It wasn't a fluke, either! I mean, don't get me wrong, this team wasn't good. They lost in consecutive weeks to mediocre Georgia Tech and Pitt teams. Their sole ranked win was over the #24 team, at home. They lost by 38 in the ACC Championship, a record margin until this past weekend. But they also weren't bad. They won 8 consecutive games to close the season, they beat a 9-win Navy team, their loss in the ACC Championship was to the eventual national champions, and for 3.5 quarters in the 2013 Chick-fil-A Bowl, they looked to be on their way to an upset of Johnny Manziel and Texas A&M.
4. Virginia Tech (2016)
Record: 9-3 (6-2 ACC)
BCS/CFP Rank: #19
Championship Game: Lost 35-42 to #3 Clemson
Bowl Game: Won Belk Bowl 35-24 vs. Arkansas
If the message board grumblings are to be believed, Justin Fuente's seat at Virginia Tech is beginning to get quite toasty. But just 4 years ago, he was making quite the splash in his first year as the Hokies' head coach, by taking them to the ACC Championship and giving eventual national champions Clemson a good game. Honestly, 2016 Virginia Tech has a lot of arguments in its favor. They scored wins over ranked North Carolina and Notre Dame teams. They finished the season strong, following their competitive battle against Clemson with a thrilling comeback victory over Arkansas in the Belk Bowl. Plus, 2016 was easily the best the Coastal Division was at any point in this seven-year time period: the year finished with three ranked Coastal teams, and FIVE (!!!) Coastal teams with at least 8 wins. Yet, alas, inexplicable losses to Georgia Tech and a downright BAD Syracuse team mean I cannot rank this side higher than #4. Their wild inconsistency is likely a large reason they ultimately were the 6th pick among ACC bowl teams that season.
3. Miami (2017)
Record: 10-1 (7-1 ACC)
BCS/CFP Rank: #7
Championship Game: Lost 3-38 to #1 Clemson
Bowl Game: Lost Orange Bowl 24-34 to #6 Wisconsin
In Week 10 of the 2017 College Football season, the ACC was at its absolute peak. It still was the conference boasting the defending national champion in both football and basketball, and what's more, they had teams ranked #2 and #4 in the College Football Playoff. 10-0 Miami and 10-1 Clemson were rivalry week wins away from setting up perhaps the most-anticipated ACC Championship game ever, and this surely also represented the Coastal Division's best chance to snatch control back from the Clemson/Florida State hegemony. Then, on Thanksgiving week, Miami got dominated by 4-win Pitt, dropping to #7 before the ACC Championship Game, in which they lost to then-#1 Clemson by 35 points. The Hurricanes still had the chance to see their exciting season off on a high note, playing in their home stadium for the Orange Bowl, but they collapsed in the 2nd half against Big Ten runners-up Wisconsin. It was still a very good year for the Canes, whose 10 wins to open the season included primetime romps over #9 Virginia Tech and #3 Notre Dame, and who still realistically had a good shot at the Playoff with a win in the ACC Championship. But their season-closing slide leaves a massive feeling of "what could have been?" They still haven't recovered, grabbing just 13 wins out of 26 to date since their destruction at the hands of Clemson.
2. North Carolina (2015)
Record: 11-1 (8-0 ACC)
BCS/CFP Rank: #10
Championship Game: Lost 37-45 to #1 Clemson
Bowl Game: Lost Russell Athletic Bowl 38-49 to #17 Baylor
In December 2015, a bright-eyed, hopeful college Senior stayed awake in his Budapest dorm room until 5 AM local time to watch the impossible happen: his beloved team, North Carolina Football, was going to win their first-ever ACC Championship and qualify for the College Football Playoff. To channel my inner Kamala Harris: that college Senior...was me. And yes, his optimism was misguided-- the Tar Heels would ultimately fall to #1 Clemson behind the latter's dominant 3rd quarter, but not before putting a scare into the Tigers with a late onside kick recovery that was errantly ruled offsides. In their bowl game, Carolina then got blitzed by Baylor in Orlando, meaning they finished the season with zero wins over ranked teams. But while '16 Virginia Tech had the quality wins that '15 UNC didn't, the Heels had the consistent form on both sides of the ball (particularly on offense, who led my Clemson friend to recently confess to me that our 2015 offense "terrified" him) that allowed them to be in the playoff discussion with a victory. And while '17 Miami had the quality wins, and the playoff discussion, they finished their season with an embarrassing loss to a subpar team, then didn't even make a Deshaun Watson-less Clemson side sweat in the ACC Championship. Between Week 2 and Week 12 of the college football season, 2015 North Carolina was probably the best team the ACC Coastal has seen the better part of this decade, as evidenced by their flawless conference record.
1. Georgia Tech (2014)
Record: 10-2 (6-2 ACC)
BCS/CFP Rank: #11
Championship Game: Lost 35-37 to #4 Florida State
Bowl Game: Won Orange Bowl 49-34 vs. #7 Mississippi State
So why isn't North Carolina #1? And perhaps a better question is, why is the #1 team one that was not in the playoff discussion the way Carolina and Miami were? Well, Georgia Tech blew their 2014 playoff chances in the middle of the season with back-to-back losses to division opponents. But take a closer look at their resumé, and you'll see that 10-2 was an extremely impressive feat for the Yellow Jackets: their losses came after starting 5-0, with wins over Miami and eventual Sun Belt champions Georgia Southern. Those losses were to Duke, a 9-win team in 2014, and North Carolina, who upset Tech at home in a night game on virtually the last play of the game. After slipping to 5-2, the Jackets finished the season with another 5-game winning streak, which this time included victories over Top 20 Clemson and Top 10 Georgia, their hated rivals. Thus, even though the playoff committee had them ranked outside the Top 10 coming into the game, it should have been little surprise that they put quite the scare into defending national champions Florida State in the ACC Championship. The Ramblin' Wreck's triple option worked to perfection in a back-and-forth affair, and only a late field goal helped Florida State preserve their 28-game winning streak. Georgia Tech wasn't finished after their ACC Championship disappointment, though; they proceeded to the Orange Bowl, and in the last college football game of the calendar year, smacked around a favored Top 10 team in Mississippi State, who were helmed by one Dak Prescott. Other than a random blip in their midseason, there can be little doubt about it: 2014 Georgia Tech was the ACC Coastal at its best. Not only were they not bad, nor good "for an ACC team," they were.....dare we say it?...good.