The NCAA Preseason Rankings from the 2019-2020 season have dropped this week and they have placed the Clemson Tigers at the No. 1 spot and the Virginia Tech Hokies at the No. 21 spot. At first glimpse, this doesn’t seem anything out of the ordinary for the ACC come preseason, however, it is lacking quite a bit.
First off, there is no dethroning Clemson of their spot. It is known that they would have the number one or number two spot for the preseason rankings. Clemson returns most of their offensive production from last year, as well as fixing up some of the open gaps created from players departing after last season. The Tigers will most likely take the ACC Atlantic again and take the ACC crown too. The issue with the rankings come with the teams hanging under Clemson.
Virginia Tech, the team that never seems to leave the preseason top 25 no matter how they finish. This is where the problems start to arise with the NCAA Preseason Rankings and how many fans took these rankings the wrong way. Now I will be the first to say, Virginia Tech has traditionally been a team that starts in the top 25 and can finish within those confines come the end of the year. However, after last year’s dip for the team, I’m not too sure that I would start them off in the spot they have been rewarded.
And this isn’t just me knocking off the Hokies as a bad team, I think they had bad circumstances last season and made do. However, to pin improvement before the season has even begun is not the way to go for the NCAA or Virginia Tech. In fact, now this team has been handed higher expectations from last year that they now must live up to in order to succeed. I think handing the No. 21 spot to a team like Virginia or Syracuse would have been much more warranted.
The other teams left out of this set of rankings such as Virginia and Syracuse, with respects to Miami, are now feeling puzzled. How could teams that finished better than the Hokies now suddenly left out of a Preseason Top 25? I think the answer is simple, but the confusion quite understandable. Throughout the history of college football, the Hokies have just been able to maintain top-25 status, outside of their tough stretch of the early to mid-2010s. This is just a normal act for us to see and it happens with Miami as well. The Hurricanes weren’t given a spot this year, but are given one quite often, even after bad seasons.
Whether you agree with the rankings or not, you have to respect them. The NCAA is playing it safe and put teams that traditionally have spots and do well within their rankings. Now the fact that there are only two ACC teams in the rankings is the upsetting part, I was expecting to see at least three. By the end of the 2019-2020 season, we are sure to see a rankings list with the likes of Clemson, Miami, Syracuse, Virginia, and Virginia Tech as the ACC slowly climbs back to its former glory.
Photo Credits: http://insidethepylon.com/film-study/film-study-u/offense-film-study-u/2017/11/28/big-ugly-spotlight-week-6-clemson-vs-virginia-tech/
