The ACC has done the impossible in looking even worse while the SEC continues to look dominant in the college football conference power rankings for Week 6.
Five weeks into the 2018 college football season, the expected is happening and we’re starting to get a better grasp of how things are shaping up across the country. The elite teams are separating themselves in big-time midseason matchups, the pretenders are starting to falter with each passing week and we can finally see truly how the Power 5 conferences stack up against one another.
Coming into last week, most people were already sour on the ACC as a whole. A conference that looked as if they might have two teams competing for a College Football Playoff spot suddenly looks like they might be lucky to even send their conference champion to the CFP. That’s obviously not a good look in the slightest for this team.
Meanwhile, we saw two other conference’s heavy-hitters establish themselves even further in Week 5. The matchup between the Ohio State Buckeyes and Penn State Nittany Lions proved that the two best teams in the Big Ten are indeed evenly matched and quite dangerous.
And as for the SEC, well, they’re still the same old SEC that’s going to dominate much of the conversation in college football. There’s a reason they are considered the best — simply, they are.
Regardless of how concrete many things are becoming, there are still plenty of moving parts and teams trying to establish themselves at this point in the season. With that in mind, let’s again stack the Power 5 conferences up against one another and see how things play out in the college football conference power rankings entering Week 6.
Watching ACC football right now is almost downright depressing. This is a conference that, historically, should always be fighting for the right to be one of the best in all of college football. After five weeks of the 2018 season, however, they are definitively the worst conference in the sport, and it’s becoming less close with each passing week.
I realize that the Clemson Tigers lost Trevor Lawrence in Week 5 in their matchup with the Syracuse Orange, who are a good team without a doubt. Thus, looking at the best team in the conference winning 27-23 in a comeback effort might not look that bad.
However, they were struggling with Lawrence at the helm, so really, it’s not far-fetched to believe they would’ve been pushed without the injury occurring. That’s troubling for the best team in the ACC, the lone perceived elite team in the group, to perform like that.
What’s more, we also saw a potential sleeper fall by the wayside last week with the Duke Blue Devils getting dominated at home by a Virginia Tech Hokies team playing their first full game with their backup quarterback. The lone bright spot may have been the NC State Wolfpack staying undefeated with a nice win over Virginia.
Even with the Wolfpack and Miami Hurricanes being quite good, the bottom of this conference is so bad. And with the “elite” looking less elite with each passing week, it’s hard to buy in on the ACC as a whole. This is the worst the conference has been in quite some time, and it’s tough to watch.