Back in late July, as the calendar crept toward the one-month mark in the countdown to college football, the conference rooms of the Grandover Resort in Greensboro, N.C., reverberated praises of what was and what was to come.
The Atlantic Coast Conference held its annual media days event at the quasi-oasis off a bland stretch of I-85, and commissioner John Swofford, the 14 coaches and the rest of the league's figureheads were well-versed on the accomplishments of the 2013 season. Florida State and Clemson made the ACC the second conference in history to claim a national title and another BCS bowl win in the same season. Eleven teams finished with a winning record, the most of any conference since 1932. The league, thanks in large part to Jameis Winston and Aaron Donald, claimed nearly every major individual award available. Forty-two players were drafted into the NFL. Appropriate quantitative talking points were utilized liberally.
"No conference has ever had as dominant a year as the ACC had last year," Jimbo Fisher told FOX Sports at the event. "I think getting that marketed out is a critical thing, and I think it's just a matter of knowledge and getting people educated."
Fast forward 10 weeks and the college football season is barely a month old, but the ACC's outlook has lost some of its 2013 luster.
The conference features just one ranked in the AP and Coaches' polls -- Fisher's No. 1 Florida State -- and, entering Week 6, any realistic aspirations in the new College Football Playoff rest firmly on the Seminoles' collective shoulders.
Nine ACC programs have already suffered two or more losses, four more than any other Power 5 conference entering this week's slate of games. Clemson, Virginia Tech and North Carolina have each entered the top-25 rankings at various points this season only to suffer multiple losses (although, granted, Clemson's losses came on the road to top-10 teams without its best quarterback starting). Conference newcomer Louisville has also made an appearance in the polls, but zero high-quality wins and a loss to Virginia leaves a strong Cardinals team with work to do. NC State remained undefeated through a soft non-conference schedule and flirted with an upset of Florida State and national recognition before succumbing to a second-half rally.
It's a 14-program jumble that could get only more tangled as time passes.
Then there's Georgia Tech, the only other undefeated team in the conference and the odds-on favorite in a murky Coastal Division, the league's lesser half that could resemble a seven-car pileup with a few timely losses from the top contenders. By almost any statistical measure the Yellow Jackets are far from a great football team. The non-conference schedule -- Wofford, Tulane and Georgia Southern -- saw coach Paul Johnson's team in survival mode at times, but with a three-point road win over Virginia Tech in the ACC opener, the triple-option attack is starting to make things interesting. On a national level, barring a highly unlikely run to the season finale against rival Georgia without taking a loss, the Yellow Jackets' record will largely remain inconsequential.
"That is very rare because I think the league is much better than people are perceiving it as," Fisher said of only placing one team in the top-25 polls this week. "I still think it's good. You've had big wins. Boston College beat USC, also. Whether you're ranked or whatever, I think it's a quality conference, has great players, consistently has the second-most players in the NFL of any league, and I think we have a very good league."
Every week can cause dramatic shifts in the race to the four-team playoff -- look no farther than the SEC West, which pits four of its five highly-ranked, undefeated teams against each other in Mississippi on Saturday -- but unless there's an ample amount of chaos it's difficult to see the ACC putting any team not named Florida State in the playoff. Yes, the national picture is just beginning to take shape. A one- or two-loss team might just be in the mix come December. Louisville stands the best chance of making some noise with Clemson, Florida State and Notre Dame still on the slate after suffering a two-point road loss against a rugged Virginia defense, but it'll take some swimming upstream. Vegas agrees: The Seminoles are listed as 7/1 favorites to win the national title while Louisville and Georgia Tech hold the second-best chances in the conference with 300/1 odds.
And FSU is by no means a shoe-in, by the way.
Florida State earned its three wins versus Power 5 conference teams by an average of just nine points, needing overtime against Clemson and a second-half offensive onslaught against NC State. As Bill Connelly pointed out earlier in the week, FSU won just two games by 15 or fewer points last season -- it simply hasn't looked nearly as dominant this time through. That could go for the conference as a whole, even with the addition of one of the nation's top programs in recent years.
If there's a juggernaut lurking in Swofford's conference, it hasn't reared its menacing head yet.
This time last year, current ACC teams made up 20 percent of the AP Poll. The lack of representation is partly due to the ebb and flow of the season, and unless the conference plummets into unenviable territory and begins beating up on itself in the worst ways, a few teams will emerge from the wreckage. FSU, Louisville, Clemson, Miami, Virginia, Georgia Tech ... the picture will clear up with each passing week. There are myriad reasons to believe Bobby Petrino's Cardinals are among the 25 best teams nationally while Clemson's offense once again looks like nightmare fuel for defensive coordinators with true freshman Deshaun Watson taking the reins.
"Obviously, you can only go by records right now. Records represent (what) the powers that be are looking at," said Virginia coach Mike London, whose 3-2 Virginia team took No. 8 UCLA and No. 18 BYU down to the wire. "I know it's a very competitive league. We have the national champion in the league. There's some really good teams in this league as well. It's interesting that everything is -- everyone's talking about where we've started and where we are now. But just like any team, you're always worried about how you finish and where you finish in the end.
"So I'm pretty confident that, with the teams that we have here in the ACC, that some of these teams will emerge and be seen and noticed when it comes down to the top 20, top 25. Like I said, right now almost half the season, but in the end, I believe, just like we're looking at, all that matters is what happens at the end of the season, and I would say the same thing for potential teams in our league to move up and be involved in the discussions for playoffs."
Still, the scenario of an ACC catapulting up through the polls and into the playoff picture is farfetched. Six different leagues separate Fisher's Seminoles from the rest of the league's teams in the polls, including independents Notre Dame (a partial ACC member) and BYU. The ACC is, practically speaking, all-in on Florida State. The top three conferences in the country -- SEC, Pac-12 and Big 12 -- can afford some slip-ups: all three conferences boast at least two top-15 teams. Even the Big Ten, which has slogged through its own disappointing start, features No. 10 Michigan State and three additional teams in the top-20.
The conversation around the ACC, aside from the Coastal cluster, which is an expected roller coaster, has changed. Swofford's conference is not primed for another historic season; instead, it is in survival mode, looking to avoid being the odd league out in the four-team playoff. Right now, the ACC has less margin for error than its Power 5 counterparts.
With only 16 undefeated teams remaining nationally -- a number that will continue to fall this weekend, the ACC needs Florida State to be as good as advertised, or face an uncertain future in Year 1 of this post-BCS world.
