Clemson Is The Runaway Choice in ACC Poll

Clemson is the decisive pick of the ACC media to win the conference championship for a second consecutive year.

Clemson by the Numbers

The poll taking during the week of ACC Kickoff/Media Days had Clemson as the top team on 167 ballots. That gave Clemson 3,083 total points. The Tigers have won 22 conference championships in the ACC, with nine of them coming under head coach Dabo Swinney.

During ACC media days, Swinney told the press that he felt his program had earned its reputation through consistency over the years. “We did something last year that only four teams in 160 years of college football have done. Nebraska did it with Coach Osborne. Coach Bowden at Florida State, Coach Saban at Alabama, and now Clemson. 14 straight nine-plus win seasons, 13 of those ten-plus win seasons. We’ve earned that through consistency,” Swinney said last week. He is in his 23^rd year at Clemson.

The Rest

It was a large gap between Clemson’s 167 first-place ballots and Miami’s seven, which was good enough to put the Hurricanes in second place in the voting, with 2,679 points. The Canes were in the conference title race in 2024 until losing to Georgia Tech and Syracuse in the last three weeks of the season. They lost Heisman-winning quarterback Cam Ward but will replace him with Georgia transfer Carson Beck.

SMU is third in the polling with two first-place votes and 2,612 points. The Mustangs finished second in the ACC in their first year in the conference after losing the championship game to Clemson on a last-second field goal.

Georgia Tech got two first-place votes and finished fourth in the preseason poll with 2,397 points. Florida State got four first-place votes coming off a 2-10 season in 2024. And someone out there in ACC media land gave a first-place vote to Virginia Tech. The Hokies finished 11^th overall in the polling.

Here is the complete order of finish for the poll, with the first-place votes in parentheses and the point total.

2025 ACC Football Predicted Order of Finish (Media Vote)

Rk  Team – Points

1. Clemson (167) – 3083
2. Miami (7) – 2679
3. SMU (2) – 2612
4. Georgia Tech (2) – 2397
5. Louisville – 2370
6. Duke – 1973
7. Florida State (4) – 1920
8. North Carolina – 1611
9. Pitt – 1571
10. NC State – 1505
11. Virginia Tech (1) – 1412
12. Syracuse – 1381
13. Boston College – 953
14. Virginia – 871
15. California – 659
16. Wake Forest – 576
17. Stanford – 426

There were 183 voters in the conference poll.

Main Image: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images