King of the Hill: ACC Football Power Rankings (Week 14)

I may do a post-bowl edition but this is likely the final ACC Football Rankings post of the season. Here’s how I rank the conference teams based on last week’s results. Number in parentheses is the team’s ranking last week.

1. (1) Clemson (12-0) - 38-3 win over South Carolina
2. (3) Virginia (9-3) - 39-30 win over Virginia Tech
3. (2) Virginia Tech (8-4) - Lost to Virginia
4. (6) Wake Forest (8-4) - 39-30 loss to Syracuse
5. (4) Miami (6-6) - 27-17 loss to Duke
6. (5) Louisville (7-5) - 45-13 loss to Kentucky
7. (8) Florida State (6-6) - 40-17 loss to Florida
8. (10) Boston College (6-6) - 26-19 win over Pitt
9. (7) Pitt (7-5) - Lost to Boston College
10. (9) North Carolina (6-6) - 41-10 win over NC State
11. (11) Syracuse (5-7) - Beat Wake Forest
12. (12) Duke (5-7) - Beat Miami
13. (13) Georgia Tech (3-9) - Lost to Georgia, 52-7
14. (14) North Carolina State (4-8) - Lost to North Carolina

The top six all remained the same other than Virginia and Virginia Tech being flip-flopped after Virginia’s head-to-head win over them.

The biggest thing I did here was revisit the whole Wake Forest, Louisville, Miami debacle, which needed a second look. This was tough because Wake was 8-4 but lost to 7-5 Louisville, who, lost to 6-6 Miami. I had mostly tried to use the head-to-head results to rank those teams but it’s also hard to place an 8-4 Wake team below a 6-6 Miami team. So I leapfrogged Wake over Louisville because they have a better record, barely lost a shootout to Louisville, and because Louisville was blown out this week.

Putting Wake over Louisville in that situation was more fair than putting Wake behind Miami, so that’s the reason for that change in order, despite the fact that all three of those teams had bad losses this weekend.

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