Sometimes, the ACC just can’t seem to get out of its own way.

That’s what happens when you count on Miami to take care of business and be the face of the conference. And the league’s officials are put in a position to impact an important game.

But at least there’s some good news for the conference.

No matter what happens, at least 1 team will make it into the College Football Playoff this year. And basketball season is already underway.

Those are just some of the 10 things I’m absolutely overreacting to after a momentous though not entirely unexpected Week 11 in and around the ACC.

10. The big winner in the ACC in Week 11 was ________ ?

It wasn’t Georgia Tech, though its upset of Miami that earned it bowl eligibility was certainly a good one.

It wasn’t Cal, which finally got off the schneid with its first-ever ACC victory. Or even Virginia,

The big winner in the ACC this week was idle SMU.

By sitting on the sidelines watching both the Hurricanes and Pitt lose, the Mustangs suddenly find themselves all alone in first place with a clear path to the ACC Championship Game in their first season as a league member.

As the computer Joshua reminded us in the 1980s Matthew Broderick film WarGames, sometimes “the only winning move is not to play.”

9. Trends aren’t always what they seem

A popular narrative heading into Saturday’s showdown between in-state rivals Duke and NC State was that they were teams heading in opposite directions. It’s true that the Wolfpack had won 2 straight while the Blue Devils were on a 2-game losing streak. 

But those results weren’t an accurate portrayal of the direction each was heading. 

Duke’s 2 losses were to SMU and Miami, teams that are on pace to meet in next month’s ACC Championship Game while the Wolfpack’s wins came at the expense of Cal and Stanford, teams that have combined for only 2 conference victories.

While Manny Diaz’s team is already bowl eligible, Dave Doeren’s is still 1 win from qualifying for the postseason.

The Blue Devils’ 29-19 win wasn’t a surprise. The result was simply an extension of the direction both teams were already heading. No matter what recent trends were suggesting.

8. Georgia Tech’s Key to victory

Sometimes the best coaching hires don’t involve an intensive (and expensive) nationwide search.
They happen completely by accident. Clemson’s decision to have a young receivers coach named Dabo take over for Tommy Bowden on an interim basis in 2008 is the classic example.

Brent Key still has a long way to come close to the success Dabo Swinney has had since being elevated to the Tigers’ job permanently. But he’s off to a promising start.

It’s doubtful that Georgia Tech would have even interviewed him for the job had Key’s predecessor Geoff Collins made it all the way through the 2022 season before getting fired. But because he was given an unexpected 8-game audition to finish out the season, the unheralded offensive line assistant gave newly hired athletic director J Batt no choice but to remove the interim tag from his title.

Key won 4 of those first 12 games, which is 1 more than Collins managed in any of his 3 full seasons at Tech. He followed that up by getting the Yellow Jackets to a bowl game last season and has made even more progress this year.

Saturday’s upset of No. 4 Miami was Tech’s second win this season against an opponent ranked in the top 10 at the time of the game. It improved Key’s record against ranked ACC teams to 6-1. Not bad for a coach whose $2.9 million base salary is among the lowest in the conference, according to rankings compiled by On3 Sports.

Or about $5 million a year less than the guy he outcoached Saturday.

7. The most disappointing team in the ACC other than Florida State is ________ ?

With apologies to NC State, which has carried on its long-standing tradition of accomplishing the least when its expected to do the most, that team is Virginia Tech.

The Hokies returned virtually everyone from a team that finished 2023 on a heater and was considered a dark-horse contender for an ACC title. But things got off to a bad start with losses to Vanderbilt and Rutgers during the nonconference schedule and never got rolling after the Hail Mary controversy at Miami.

After Saturday’s loss to Clemson, coach Brent Pry has still yet to beat an ACC opponent with a winning record while falling to 5-5 overall this season, 3-3 in the conference.

6. Senior Day isn’t just for seniors anymore

Saturday was NC State’s final home game of the season. And as is Senior Day tradition, each upperclassman on the roster was introduced before the game to be acknowledged by the crowd at Carter-Finley Stadium and present a rose to their mothers.

As this was going on, I couldn’t help but wonder how many other members of the Wolfpack were also playing their final home game as a member of the program.

Let’s just say that State’s NIL collective is going to have to pony up a large chunk of change in order to keep under-used star receiver KC Concepcion and promising freshman quarterback CJ Bailey around long enough for them to celebrate their own Senior Day moments.

5. While we’re on the subject of not coming back …

This is the time of year in which coaches begin firing their coordinators in an attempt to take the heat off themselves. The process began Sunday when Florida State’s Mike Norvell sent both Alex Atkins and Adam Fuller packing in the aftermath of Saturday’s 52-3 embarrassment at the hands of Notre Dame.

It’s not as if the scapegoating isn’t warranted. Atkins’ offense has yet to gain 300 yards this season and ranks 133rd out of 133 FBS teams in scoring at 13.3 points per game. Fuller’s defense has been slightly better. But with the team cratering at 1-9 and the head coach insulated by a big buyout (reportedly $63 million), someone had to pay the price.

Now that Norvell has cleaned his house, the most likely candidates to be next on the chopping block are NC State offensive coordinator Robert Anae and Clemson special teams coach Mike Reed.

NC State coach Dave Doeren hired Anae to add some flavor to a vanilla attack. And yet, the Wolfpack’s offense remains as bland as low-fat yogurt. He’s completely wasted one of the most dynamic talents in the ACC by failing to get the ball in Concepcion’s hands. And blaming injuries for the second straight season isn’t an excuse.

That brings us to Reed.

I know Swinney is loyal to a fault. And he’s not in danger of getting fired himself. But 5 blocked field goals in a single season can’t be ignored. He’s already changed personnel on the protection team. The next step is changing the guy coaching them.

4. One coach who will be coming back

Tony Elliott put himself in a position to save his job by going 4-1 to start the season against the soft part of Virginia’s schedule. But even though the win total was already higher than either of his first 2 seasons, he found himself back on the hot seat after making the turn to the more difficult back half.

Three straight defeats punctuated a decisive home loss to a wounded North Carolina team put Elliott back on the hot seat and made a 7-game losing streak end the season a real possibility.

Not the best way to convince your boss to keep you on.

Saturday’s road upset of No. 18 Pitt, however, changed the narrative.

It didn’t just stop the bleeding and move UVa within a win of bowl eligibility, though still a long shot with Notre Dame, SMU and rival Virginia Tech left to play. It also bought Elliott – a genuinely nice guy who did a masterful job of guiding his players through an unthinkable tragedy 2 years ago – at least 1 more season in Charlottesville.

3. Mario’s gonna Mario

It was only a matter of who, where and when. At some point, it was inevitable that Miami would do what Miami always does. And Mario Cristobal would do what Mario Cristobal always does

The fact that the Hurricanes chose Saturday’s game to finally bury themselves in a hole from which even Cam Ward couldn’t dig his way out makes their implosion all the more spectacular. It was against Georgia Tech last year that Cristobal performed his most famous act of game mismanagement by failing to have his quarterback take a knee with a chance to run out the clock.

The good news for Miami is that this loss to the Yellow Jackets didn’t damage either its ACC Championship Game or Playoff possibilities. The Hurricanes still control their own destiny. All they have to do is win out – in 2 weeks against Wake Forest, at Syracuse in the regular-season finale and against SMU for the conference title.

But that’s the rub.

Not only has The U traditionally come up small in the biggest of games during its time in the ACC, but Cristobal’s teams also have a habit of letting 1 damaging loss turn into even more damaging losses. It happened in 2022 after the Hurricanes stubbed their toe against Middle Tennessee State and again last season following the Kneelgate game against Georgia Tech.

So fasten those seatbelts.

The roller-coaster ride might only have just begun.

2. Thank goodness for automatic bids

Miami’s loss to Georgia Tech will have no immediate impact on the race for the ACC Championship Game. But it has drastically changed the league’s outlook concerning the College Football Playoff.

And not for the better.

Nothing is set in stone until the final poll is announced on Selection Sunday. But with the Hurricanes set to drop from their current spot at No. 4 and No. 13 SMU likely to remain outside of the top 12, the ACC is all but assured of getting only 1 spot in the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.

Clemson is the only other team still mathematically alive for a shot at the league title. But to get into the championship game, the Tigers need Miami to lose again and SMU to drop 2 of its 3 remaining games. That means the conference championship would be guaranteed to have at least 2 losses.

Thank goodness for automatic bids.

1. Charlotte, we have a problem …

The Hail Mary reversal that decided Virginia Tech-Miami was bad. The targeting call that wasn’t a week later at Cal may have been worse. But of all the game-altering decisions made by ACC officials this season, what happened at the end of Saturday’s Pitt-Virginia game topped them all.

This was more than just a missed call or confusion over what targeting is or isn’t. It involved a misapplication of a rule. And the league office only complicated matters by issuing a statement validating the mistake.

The controversy surrounds a 4th-and-1 play with just over 5 minutes remaining. Trailing by 2, the Panthers appeared to stop the Cavaliers short of the line to gain. But the play was nullified when referee Nate Black ruled that his crew “was not in position” when the ball was snapped. That gave UVa a do-over it used to extend their drive, eat up another 3 minutes off, kick a field goal and go on to a victory that eliminated Pitt from conference championship game contention.

We’ll never know how the game might have ended had the controversial play stood and Pitt taken over needing only a field goal to take the lead. But what we do know is that the ACC’s explanation for the call, reported by Stephen Thompson of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, made a bad situation even worse.

“Prior to completion of the substitution process, the ball was improperly snapped before the officials were in position to officiate,” the ACC’s statement said. “There is no foul, the play clock is set to 25 seconds and the clock starts on the ready-for-play signal.”

That, however, is contrary to Rule 4, Article 4, Approved Ruling 4-1-4 of the NCAA rulebook, which states that in just such an instance when the ball is snapped before it’s been made ready for play, it should be ruled a dead ball, delay-of-game penalty. Such an application would have forced the Cavaliers to attempt a longer field goal with much more time left on the clock.

The incident is just the latest in a series of stains on the conference and its officials this season. It’s a problem commissioner Jim Phillips and the league office can’t brush off with erroneous statements. Substantive steps must be taken to address the situation this offseason before the ACC’s already shaky reputation takes any more hits.