The ACC began the season fighting for respect. The early CFP rankings show it is an uphill battle

Rhett Lashlee has done the math. It rolls around in the SMU coach’s head every week. The more he thinks about it, the more it doesn’t add up.

Why, Lashlee wonders, is the Atlantic Coast Conference fighting what seems to be an uphill battle for respect from the College Football Playoff committee?

"To look at our league and say, 'Well we may be a one-bid league,' but you look at another league (the Big Ten) that we have a winning record against, and say 'Oh they're going to get four in,'" Lashlee said Tuesday, a few hours before the latest CFP rankings had the Mustangs (8-1 overall, 5-0 ACC) as the second team out of the coveted top 12. "It doesn't make sense to me."

Over the summer, the college football paradigm shifted following the latest round of realignment, with the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference adding bluebloods like USC, Oregon and Texas and the ACC welcoming less-revered programs SMU, Cal and Stanford. What ACC officials and Lashlee's coaching brethren feared seems to be playing out.

"The disrespect (was) there preseason," Pittsburgh coach Narduzzi said. "I'm sure it's there midseason."

Narduzzi, whose team is at 7-2 overall and 3-2 in the league with nonconference wins over Big 12 members Cincinnati and West Virginia, believes the ACC is the best league in the country, pointing to parity as proof of its competitiveness. Shouldn’t Georgia Tech toppling Miami and Louisville taking down Clemson in Death Valley be proof of the depth of the league as a whole?

Apparently not.

"It hurts when you're beating each other up, no question about it," Narduzzi said.

If you play in the ACC anyway.

It doesn’t appear to be much of an issue in the SEC, where Alabama and Ole Miss find themselves inside the projected CFP field in mid-November despite having multiple conference losses, with another two-loss team (Georgia) right above SMU at No. 13 in the current bracket.

The road for the ACC to get multiple teams into the CFP is narrowing by the week. The best case would seem to be for SMU and Miami to win out followed by a well-played and tightly contested ACC championship game.

Warde Manuel, the CFP Selection Committee chair, said the Mustangs and Hurricanes have been impressive. What he didn’t have to say is that only one of them has been impressive enough to merit a spot in the top 12 when the second, third and fourth-place teams in the SEC and Big Ten are both comfortably in the field for now.

The irony is that the fourth-place team in the ACC (Louisville) may be the second-hottest team in the conference behind SMU. Clemson is currently in third and could keep its hopes of an ACC title game berth alive with a victory at Pitt on Saturday, with a shot to further bolster its CFP at-large hopes by downing rival South Carolina the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Swinney struggles to understand how some narratives shift and others don’t. Virginia Tech began its season with an overtime loss on the road at Vanderbilt. It looked like a red flag at the time. Now - with the Commodores in the midst of a renaissance - not so much.

"Everybody is like, 'Oh, the league stinks, you lost to Vanderbilt,’" Swinney said. “Well, I think Vanderbilt beat Alabama and Auburn. I think they’re pretty good. And that was a touchdown game in Nashville with Virginia Tech."

The same Virginia Tech team that took Miami to the last play in September and handled Georgia Tech in October, two weeks before the Yellow Jackets handed Heisman Trophy candidate Cam Ward and the Hurricanes their first loss.

In the SEC, that sort of "Any Given Saturday" approach is celebrated. The ACC does not seem to be getting the same benefit of the doubt.

"When other leagues beat each other up internally, they're considered a deep, solid league," Lashlee said. "When we beat up (each other) internally, we're considered a weak league."

The Big 12 could feel the same way, since the CFP rankings suggest the league is looking a lot like a one-bid pony - BYU? Colorado? - despite a tight race for the championship.

The ACC put up 43 nonconference wins, including eight victories over other Power Four schools. It currently has eight teams bowl eligible and nearly half its conference games have been decided by a touchdown or less, which the ACC considers proof of its depth.

Throw in a little star power - Ward has been in the Heisman Trophy conversation all season, with Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik on the fringe - and the league believes it checks all the same boxes the Big Ten and SEC do.

Well, except for one: brand recognition. SMU is in its first season in the league after coming over from the American Athletic Conference. Miami is still Miami, but the Hurricanes haven’t ended the season ranked in the top 10 in over two decades. Clemson remains among the ACC’s elite, but the Tigers have taken a step back toward the rest of the field in recent seasons.

It doesn’t help that defending league champion Florida State - the same program that has sued the ACC in search of an escape plan - has nose-dived from preseason top 10 to the school’s worst season in 50 years.

While Lashlee admits he can get caught up thinking about the 'what ifs' he can take solace in knowing SMU controls its destiny.

If the Mustangs keep winning, they’re in. If do anything other than claim the conference title, they leave themselves at the mercy of a committee that doesn’t seem - at the moment anyway - to consider the ACC an equal to its brethren.

"I don't know what can be done," he said. "I think some of that stuff is predetermined a little bit, and that's the bias we're talking about. … I think we've got four big-time leagues in college football. There needs to be quality representation from all from all four."

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AP sports writers Aaron Beard, Stephen Hawkins, Charles Odum and Pete Iacobelli contributed to this report.