College football crossed the offseason Rubicon over the weekend as we’re now closer to kickoff in Week Zero than we are removed from the national title game. As we hit the downslope barrelling toward the upcoming 2025 season—and with most of the transfer portal activity quieted down—it’s time to check in with the major conferences to see just how they’re shaping up coming out of the spring.
First up, the ACC.
The league occupies an interesting middle ground in the broader landscape. On the field, there’s a team that is a trendy pick to be among the national elite, a handful of up-and-coming contenders and essentially the remaining set of teams who will be a few coin flips away from having a good year or a mediocre one. The ACC doesn’t feel any closer to the SEC and Big Ten in terms of overall potential, but it will be must-watch action given the number of storylines swirling around the 17 teams who are trying to make it to Charlotte for the title game in December.
As a result, there should be no shortage of interest in the conference even if the level of play from week to week this fall isn’t quite as high end as some around the league office would like.
Title favorite: Clemson Tigers
Does Dabo Swinney have his groove back? It’s starting to feel that way. The Tigers return the bulk of their two-deep from last year’s ACC champions and are hoping the flukish way they made the College Football Playoff (and subsequent one-and-done loss) can be the kind of growing pain that the core group of players can build upon moving forward. There’s not just a group of good players coming back though, there’s the potential for upwards of four first-round picks leading the way, including a quarterback in Cade Klubnik who is entering a third season as a starter and has plenty of offensive consistency with offensive coordinator Garrett Riley back. Defensively, new coordinator Tom Allen could be a big upgrade, and he’s got plenty of talent to work with—especially up front.
If there’s one question mark hovering over Clemson, it might be the schedule. It has the LSU Tigers in the eastern-most Death Valley for an opener and also has to play the South Carolina Gamecocks in Columbia, S.C. In league play, a four-game stretch starting in late October that includes the SMU Mustangs, Duke Blue Devils and a trip to the Louisville Cardinals is about as tough as they come in the ACC.
Conference tiers
Dark horses: SMU Mustangs, Miami Hurricanes, Louisville Cardinals
Aiming high: Duke Blue Devils, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, North Carolina Tar Heels
Battling for a bowl: Boston College Eagles, California Golden Bears, Florida State Seminoles, NC State Wolfpack, Pitt Panthers, Syracuse Orange, Virginia Cavaliers, Virginia Tech Hokies
Building for next year: Stanford Cardinal, Wake Forest Demon Deacons
The ACC seems quite stratified coming out of spring practice with two programs hoping to stay afloat until 2026, a quartet of true contenders to make the CFP at the top and 11 others in various states of roster flux that should leave a ton of toss-up games. If there’s one key to finding any bit of separation, it might come down to having a quarterback or not. Clemson and SMU both return quality starters from their playoff runs last season, while Miami, Louisville, Duke and North Carolina are bringing in high-profile transfers who have flashed a lot in their previous stops. How well others at the position play could be the difference between making a bowl game or not for plenty of other programs.
Top storyline: Chapel Bill
The Tar Heels have barely even practiced in 2025, and all the greater college football world can think about seems to be their whippersnapper of a new coach in 73-year-old Bill Belichick.
While that is partially off-the-field related as a result of some recent PR mishaps and the omnipresence of a young headline-generating girlfriend, there’s still plenty of intrigue over just how the greatest NFL head coach in recent memory will translate to a college game that is driving even longtime stalwarts to retirement. The schedule is manageable enough to give some optimism for those around Chapel Hill, N.C., at an actual schematic advantage manifesting itself in Carolina Blue, but some pretty weighty expectations will need to be met for this all to be a Year 1 success.
A program known far more for hoops success simply doesn’t hire Bill Belichick, pay him $10 million, pay his staff even more and then seem O.K. with the usual 7–5, 8–4 records that predecessor Mack Brown regularly delivered. Sure, there will be plenty of casual fans who will be tuning in to see more North Carolina football this season, but it won’t mean much if the school overpromises a New England Patriots–like miracle between the lines and Belichick under delivers with a subpar product.
Either way, seeing the hoodie roaming the sideline this fall at Kenan Stadium figures to be the most interesting thing about the ACC for at least the first month or two of the 2025 campaign and likely an offseason topic du jour from now until this time next year. The Chapel Bill era might not quite reach the hype train of Coach Prime with the Colorado Buffaloes, but it certainly could come close.
Under-the-radar storyline: Will it all be kumbaya after legal infighting?
The ACC settled its various lawsuits with league members Clemson and Florida State in March, all of which prompted some pretty notable changes to how the league conducts business. This includes a new revenue-sharing model and some reduced exit fees that seemingly put a clock on the league experiencing another round of realignment.
While the longer-term impact of the settlement might take some more time to fully digest, there was quite a bit of public saber-rattling (especially out of Tallahassee). It’s not every day that one school racks up billable hours for the rest of its conference and then shows up to media days in July claiming everything is great. Coaches and players may be immune from caring about the state of the league once practice begins, but it’s worth seeing how the ACC moves forward in the wake of a contentious past two years. As much as everybody has tried to preach unity the last few months and how happy they are at the direction for the league, it will be interesting to see if that still holds true if things don’t go so well on the field in 2025 and fighting to get two teams into the CFP brings up some of those issues back from a low simmer.
Notable players arriving
Transfers: Miami QB Carson Beck (Georgia Bulldogs), Florida State TE Duce Robinson (USC Trojans), Miami DB Xavier Lucas (Wisconsin Badgers), Florida State DE James Williams (Nebraska Cornhuskers), Clemson edge Will Heldt (Purdue Boilermakers)
Freshmen: Clemson DL Amare Adams, Miami edge Hayden Lowe, SMU OT Dramodd Odoms, Georgia Tech OT Josh Petty, Cal QB Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele
Notable players leaving
Draft: Miami QB Cam Ward, North Carolina RB Omarion Hampton, Louisville QB Tyler Shough, Boston College edge Donovan Ezeiruaku, Cal CB Nohl Williams, Syracuse QB Kyle McCord
Transfer: Georgia Tech WR Eric Singleton Jr. (Auburn Tigers), Florida State edge Patrick Payton (LSU), Virginia Tech OT Xavier Chaplin (Auburn), Stanford edge David Bailey (Texas Tech Red Raiders), NC State WR Kevin Concepcion (Texas A&M Aggies)
New coaches
In addition to the aforementioned Belichick at North Carolina, two other newcomers arrived in the ACC for 2025 and both came in a bit behind the eight-ball in terms of timing to get their programs on a good foot. In Winston-Salem, N.C., Jake Dickert made the cross-country trek from the Washington State Cougars to replace Dave Clawson after 11 seasons of slow mesh football. The Demon Deacons are coming off back-to-back 4–8 seasons, and there’s no denying this is a tough job that has only gotten tougher in the transfer portal/NIL era. Dickert, however, has won in a lot of tough-to-win places. Despite not having much in the way of geographical connections to the area, he could make Wake a tough out in the near future given how hard his teams often play.
Things are much more unsettled on the Farm, which fired Troy Taylor in March after reports surfaced about his conduct toward staff members. Freshly installed Stanford general manager Andrew Luck is the de facto leader of the program (the athletic director chair sits open, too) and turned to his former Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich to be the interim on the headset until a full coaching search can be conducted. The roster wasn’t in great shape to begin with, and several key outgoing transfers put the Cardinal even further behind some of their peers, which makes Reich’s one season in charge a potentially very rough one before even discussing how a failed NFL head coach will translate to college football.
Coaches on the hot seat
Generally, job security is pretty decent around the ACC but some interesting decisions could loom among athletic directors in December depending on results—especially in the middle class of teams that hover around bowl eligibility.
The heat is especially palpable in Virginia after Cavaliers coach Tony Elliott hasn’t lived up to his promise since arriving from Clemson and Hokies coach Brent Pry took a notable step back last season. The buyouts for both will still be more than either school wants to stomach, but missing out on a bowl game at this point in their tenures will likely force a change.
Things are far more nebulous around NC State’s Dave Doeren and Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi. Both have won over 70 games during their time on campus and have amazingly become the sixth- and twelfth-longest tenured head coaches, respectively, in FBS right now. They have brought incredible consistency to their programs, but there’s also not a ton of high-water marks to hang their hats on (just one conference title and five end-of-season Top 25 rankings between the two of them). After each won just three ACC games in 2024, the calls for a change will grow louder in the two fan bases if this year is another mediocre campaign on the field, even if the buyout amounts will force those decisions further down the road.
In a similar vein, Florida State’s Mike Norvell is in a familiar category but a different league when it comes to being someone the fan base is unhappy with in terms of results but who has a buyout that is entirely indigestible.
The final word
You would think this was going to be a banner summer for the ACC with plenty of positive momentum after the league produces the No. 1 overall draft picks in the NFL and NBA. While that normally would be worth puffing the chest out a little more, the questions about the level of play in the conference on the gridiron are unlikely to die down anytime soon and may even be ramped up going into a critical season. There are four clear contenders who should be in the CFP mix to help carry everybody’s water, but whether that outweighs so much meh in the middle will be one of the bigger things to track.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as ACC Football Primer: Clemson Is Favorite, League Settles Lawsuits.