College football conference power rankings: Week 5

The ACC has bottomed out officially as the SEC remains dominant looking at our college football conference power rankings entering Week 5.

They say that time flies when you’re having fun, and the first four weeks of the 2018 college football season have most certainly been that. Of course, it’s hard to believe that we’re now entering the fifth week of action, meaning that we’re essentially one-third of the way through the season. We’ve got to think happy thoughts and not about the doldrums of the offseason, however, so let’s move past that.

This past week in the world of college football was calamity at its finest. That started, most notably, with the Virginia Tech Hokies and what happened to them against Old Dominion. Even with the ACC stalwarts going on the road for this game, it seemed like a lock. Only it wasn’t even close to one. After losing their starting quarterback to injury, the Hokies found themselves in a bad place and, at the end of 60 minutes, on the wrong side of a massive upset led by a backup quarterback.

There was plenty more drama throughout the country in Week 4’s action, starting with the offensive shootout between the UCF Knights and Florida Atlantic Owls on Friday night and going all the way through a tight one in the Pac-12 between the Washington Huskies and Herm Edwards’ Arizona State Sun Devils. Now, however, the dust has settled and we can take stock of what we saw out there.

As we have already a few times to this point, we’re going to take stock after each week of the Power 5 conferences and see how they stack up against one another. There was movement, without a doubt, this week, but who fell where? Let’s get into the college football conference power rankings entering Week 5.

Through the first three weeks of the 2018 college football season, the ACC was certainly in the running for the worst of the Power 5 conferences. After the Clemson Tigers at the top, there really wasn’t much that was popping off of the page each week, and that issue was exacerbated by the fact that the bottom of the conference simply looked awful. That all was made to look even worse this past Saturday.

There’s no place to start other than with the Virginia Tech Hokies. Even going on the road to play Old Dominion, they should have rolled over a team that was previously winless. And even after starting quarterback Josh Jackson had to leave the game due to injury, the Hokies still should have won. Instead, they blew a 28-21 lead that they held after three quarters and were upset in massive fashion, falling 49-35 to the Monarchs.

Based on that alone, it’d be hard for the ACC as a whole to recover in regards to how they’d place in these power rankings. Just fore good measure, though, it got worse. Virginia Tech was one of four ranked ACC teams entering the week, and they were one of two that lost as Boston College was also knocked off, falling to an also previously winless Purdue team, 30-13.

Sure, other teams throughout the conference took care of their business as they were expected too. However, when you have supposedly two of the top four teams in the conference losing in such embarrassing fashion, you’re brining up the rear in the conference power rankings.