Defending champion Florida State is the top choice to win the Atlantic Coast Conference football title in the preseason.
The Seminoles earned 81 out of 170 first-place votes from those who attended last week’s “ACC Kickoff” media event, with Clemson coming in second with 55 votes. Florida State and Clemson were far ahead, with a 51-point gap between them and Miami, which was third.
The difference between Miami and the next team, which was 313 points, showed a clear separation between the top two teams and the rest.
Florida State won all 13 of their games last season and defeated Louisville in the ACC Championship for their first title since 2014. However, they didn’t make the College Football Playoff due to a late-season injury to quarterback Jordan Travis.
This year, the league expanded to 17 football teams by adding California and Stanford from the Pac-12, as well as SMU from the American Athletic Conference. Among these new teams, SMU was the highest ranked at seventh, followed by California at 10th and Stanford at the bottom.
The Hurricanes received 17 first-place votes. North Carolina State was ranked fourth and received eight first-place votes. Louisville was picked fifth, with Virginia Tech, SMU, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, and California following. Duke was ranked 11th, then came Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Boston College, Wake Forest, Virginia, and Stanford.
