Heading into 2026, the ACC might be the most compelling league in college football. The Big Ten has the last three national titles and the SEC still carries the brand power, but the ACC has the kind of week-to-week tension that keeps the whole conference worth watching. The top end is loaded with intrigue, the bottom is crowded with pressure points, and a few of the biggest names in the sport are walking into seasons that could define their future.
Miami is the favorite in most preseason conversations, but even that comes with a catch. The Hurricanes have the talent to justify the hype, and the roster includes Darian Mensah, Malachi Toney, and Damon Wilson II. Still, Mario Cristobal’s teams have a habit of slipping when nobody expects it during the regular season, and turnover in the trenches could be the thing that opens the door for an upset.
That Miami buzz also comes with a reminder of what happened last season at Duke. The Blue Devils won the ACC Championship, but their run gets overshadowed by Miami’s College Football Playoff push.
Duke’s success was built around quarterback Darian Mensah, whom the program made the highest paid player in the sport after his rise at Tulane, and star wide receiver Cooper Barkate. Miami then pulled both players away, using the same kind of blueprint Duke had just ridden to the top of the league.
Now Duke has to figure out life after both of them, and the timing of those losses wasn’t ideal. With the Transfer Portal cycle already deep into its run, the options were limited.
Walker Eget is the answer for now, and he arrives with a shot to start right away after throwing for 3,051 yards and 17 touchdowns at San Jose State last year. The production hasn’t exactly jumped off the page, but Manny Diaz’s staff has already shown it can identify the right kind of quarterback, and the move for Mensah gives this one real upside.
The pressure is even heavier in Chapel Hill, where the second year of the Bill Belichick era is one of the biggest storylines in the conference. Belichick’s move into college football at North Carolina was one of the most stunning coaching developments in recent memory, and the early excitement vanished fast after TCU punched the Tar Heels in the mouth on the first drive of the season. This offseason has been quieter than the chaos that followed, but the concerns haven’t gone anywhere.
North Carolina also dealt with another unsettling development when General Manager and longtime Bill Belichick friend Mike Lombardi was placed on administrative leave, with few details made public. On top of that, the roster has turned over heavily again. If Belichick can’t show clear progress, North Carolina will have every reason to make a change.
Florida State is in a similar kind of spotlight, only the fall has been even steeper. Mike Norvell’s program went from 12-0 in the regular season and an ACC title in 2023 to a stretch that has completely changed the conversation.
Jordan Travis’ injury kept the Seminoles out of the College Football Playoff, and the program has never really recovered. Over the last two seasons, Florida State is just 7-17 overall and 3-13 in ACC play.
That kind of collapse puts Norvell in a brutal spot entering 2026. Another rough year could make him the first coach fired, and once again he’s leaning on a heavy transfer haul in hopes of getting the Seminoles pointed in the right direction.
Then there’s Clemson, where the question isn’t whether the expectations are high - it’s which version of Dabo Swinney shows up. The Tigers entered last season with championship-level hopes and finished 7-6 overall and 4-4 in ACC play. Since making the College Football Playoff in 2020, Clemson has only been back once, and that ended in a first-round loss in the 2024 expanded format.
Even so, Swinney has still put together strong results over the last few years, going 47-20 since the 2021 season. But another down year would force a bigger conversation, whether that means Clemson looks for a coach better suited to the current era or Swinney decides to move on to another job or something outside of college coaching altogether.
In Other News...
Clemson Freshman Is Forcing His Way Into A Banged Up Receiver Battle
With Clemsons receiver room dealing with injuries this spring, Gordon Sellars III has been handed more work than most freshmen usually see, and the mid-year enrollee has done enough to make himself part of the conversation. The 2026 signee has taken advantage of the extra reps, using his size and competitiveness to hold up against older defenders while giving position coach Tyler Grisham another option to lean on as the group sorts itself out.
Grisham has liked the way Sellars has carried himself through the spring, noting that the freshman has looked comfortable in the kind of contested situations that tend to separate depth pieces from real contributors. Sellars also flashed in the spring game with a touchdown, another sign that he is not just filling space while the room is banged up. For a Clemson offense trying to get healthy and establish its pecking order, he has made the receiver battle a little more interesting. [Read more 🡒]
Clemson Is Dragging Out A QB Decision That Could Cost Early Games
With Cade Klubnik off to the NFL, Clemson is working through a quarterback picture that still has a little more suspense than the staff probably wants this time of year. Christopher Vizzina is the likeliest answer after serving as the backup and getting a meaningful start against SMU, while freshmen Tait Reynolds and Chris Denson are still in the mix as the Tigers sort out the position.
The longer Clemson takes to settle on a starter, the more important those early reps become for an offense that usually leans on continuity at quarterback. Vizzinas path would seem to line up with that preference, and there is also the added wrinkle of him working with offensive coaches Chad Morris and Tajh Boyd, but the real issue is simple enough: Clemson needs a reliable decision soon enough to avoid spending the opening stretch of the season searching for one. [Read more 🡒]