Mario Cristobal returned to his alma mater because he believed he could help Miami return to its rightful place atop college football.
In his fourth season at the helm, Cristobal came damn close to doing just that. The Hurricanes made it all the way to the national championship game before losing to Indiana. The ‘Canes are definitely “back” to national prominence, and now they plan to stay there.
That’s good news for Miami but also the Atlantic Coast Conference as a whole.
“The ACC is better when our football brands are healthy,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told NBC Sports. “Miami’s been one of those bigger brands in in the league, so to see them have success continues to validate that we play really good football in the ACC.
“When you think about the last couple years, we’ve had three different teams with Miami, SMU, and Clemson all making the CFP. … The ACC has firmly established itself in the national championship conversation.”
Which is a big deal for the ACC in the ever-changing landscape of college sports. This is a conference that has always had something of a push-and-pull between its basketball roots and a future led by football. It absolutely needs and desires national title-caliber football teams, and the question heading into the 2026 season is: Miami … and who else?
SMU and Louisville are popular picks, and they certainly seem to have rosters capable of making a case for the CFP. Could Clemson return to national relevance? Might Georgia Tech make some noise with the brother of last year’s Heisman Trophy winner at quarterback? We’re only weeks away from getting answers to these pressing questions.
For the purposes of this preview, we are not including Notre Dame as an ACC member.
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Top storylines in the ACC
Miami is officially “back.” The U is also the hunted now.
The Hurricanes are back where they want to be — nationally relevant and among college football’s elite. They’ll be a top-10 team coming into the season in both polls, fresh off an appearance in the national championship game against Indiana.
Two years into his Miami tenure, Cristobal was 12-13. In the two years since then, he’s 23-3. He’s built his program from the line of scrimmage out, which has worked pretty well for both the ‘Canes and the three 2026 first-round picks we’re about to see make their NFL debuts next month. But, as we saw last year and will again this fall, the skill positions will be special at Miami as well.
Star wide receiver Malachi Toney should be one of the best players in the sport, and Miami will add another big-play threat in Cooper Barkate, who comes to Coral Gables from Duke. Running back Mark Fletcher Jr. looks to build off his incredible CFP run behind a reworked (but, of course, reliably good) offensive line. And Darian Mensah should be a clear upgrade over Carson Beck … and Beck was still good enough to win three CFP games and get Miami within a couple of plays of a national title. This offense is going to be very, very good again. So will the defense, although it’ll look quite different without Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor causing havoc.
The biggest difference for Miami this year, though, might be the outside expectations for this program. No one is wondering if Miami can ever be “back” again. The Hurricanes are back to being nationally relevant. Fans and pundits believe Cristobal can manage and win big games. Questions have been answered, and the roster remains loaded with talent. So, everyone just expects Miami to be a national title contender again this year.
And everyone also expects Miami to win the ACC this season. The ‘Canes were the runaway favorite in the ACC preseason poll, which is worth noting because they have never won the conference since joining the ACC (back in 2004). But I expect that to change this fall.
The next chapter of Chapel Bill
After an uninspiring 4-8 campaign, the Bill Belichick experiment at North Carolina enters Year 2. And it does so with general manager and longtime Belichick consigliere Michael Lombardi on paid administrative leave. The Athletic reported that Lombardi’s leave was tied to a human resources complaint; UNC hired outside lawyers to conduct an investigation into Lombardi’s conduct.
Belichick also enters Year 2 with his son and defensive coordinator, Steve, on medical leave and out indefinitely. Bill Belichick said the rest of the defensive staff would work together in Steve’s absence and would not say if he thought Steve would be able to coach in the season opener against TCU in Ireland on Aug. 29.
Add these latest headlines to the pile of off-field headaches that have defined the Belichick era in Chapel Hill so far. Lombardi himself had caused more than a few of them. There were questions regarding the level of involvement from Belichick’s girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, who is most definitely not a UNC employee. And, of course, you have to talk about the football itself. Despite hiring Lombardi to be the highest-paid GM in college football, the roster he put together was nowhere near the caliber needed to compete successfully in the ACC.
We’ll have to wait and see what new offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino can do on the offensive side of the ball, but there are so many question marks everywhere else that it’s hard to feel confident that the Tar Heels will improve from last year’s putrid 4-8 mark. Opening with TCU in Ireland will not be easy for UNC, and it could be a barometer of what’s to come with one of the most challenging ACC schedules this fall.
James Franklin starts over at Virginia Tech
Penn State stunned the sport when it cut ties with James Franklin in the middle of his 12th season. Part of the shock was how quickly the bottom fell out from under Franklin with a team that began the season ranked No. 2 in the country — coming off a trip to the CFP national semifinals. And the other part was the massive buyout, which was eventually reduced to just $9 million after Franklin took the Virginia Tech job.
It is going to be strange to see Franklin on the Hokies’ sideline this fall. But it’s a job that makes a ton of sense for Franklin, with his deep ties to the region as a recruiter and his history of turning around programs. Virginia Tech has also significantly upped its investment in football, believing it can now do what it takes to compete at the highest level in this era of the sport. The Hokies can and should be regular CFP contenders out of the ACC if this marriage works as well as I think it will.
At Penn State, Franklin’s teams beat everyone they should but struggled to beat the Big Ten’s best (who doubled as the nation’s best). Eventually, a 10-win season wasn’t good enough for a program that expects to contend for national championships.
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Virginia Tech hasn’t reached the 10-win mark in a decade. I think the Hokie fan base will happily take the kind of season Penn State fans deemed unacceptable. It might take a couple of years to get this thing rolling the way Franklin wants it to, but this is a program to keep a close eye on in Year 1, especially with former Virginia Tech head coach Brent Pry sticking around as the defensive coordinator and former Penn State quarterback Ethan Grunkemeyer following Franklin to Blacksburg.
Breaking down the new ACC tiebreaker
We all spent way too much time trying to figure out how the tiebreaking procedures worked in the ACC last season. I know I personally spent too much time trying to explain why I wasn’t going to put Miami into my projected CFP brackets as the ACC champion even though the ‘Canes were the highest-ranked ACC team … because they were unlikely to play for the title game and have a real chance at earning a CFP spot designated for conference champions.
It was all extremely confusing! And it wasn’t good for the ACC that its best team nearly missed the 12-team field because it had to sneak in as an at-large selection.
So, the league attempted to fix this. There is a whole new tiebreaker procedure, one that takes into account that some ACC teams will be playing eight conference games while others play nine. The first tiebreaker remains head-to-head results, and there are series of scenarios beyond that (in which teams can be considered “tied” if they have the same number of conference wins or losses even if they play different amounts of ACC games). When head-to-head matchups cannot separate tied teams, the ACC said it will use the Team Success Ranking provided by SportSource Analytics to reward the team with the strongest overall body of work.
It could still be a bit wonky. But Phillips said at ACC media days that he is confident it will end up with the leagues’ two best teams playing for a conference championship. Phillips said that the ACC worked with consultants and did 10,000 simulated season outcomes to ensure the model fairly addressed many different potential scenarios.
It’s also worth pointing out that the CFP tweaked its policies in light of what happened last year, with ACC champion Duke unranked and two champions from the Group of 5 making it into the 12-team bracket. Now, the CFP explicitly states that the champions from the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 will make the field, plus the highest-ranked champion from the remaining leagues.
The expected CFP contenders
Miami
The Hurricanes should have one of the best and most explosive offenses in the country. Couple that with a physical, aggressive defense, and there’s just so much to like about this team once again. It is possible — if not likely — that Miami is undefeated heading into a monster rematch against Notre Dame on Nov. 7. But even if the Hurricanes aren’t perfect to that point (or if they drop that one to the Irish), they should still be extremely well-positioned both in the ACC race and the CFP picture. Miami avoids both SMU and Louisville in the regular season.
SMU
Kevin Jennings is one of the most experienced returning quarterbacks in the country, and if you believe in him, you believe that this team is capable of both contending in the ACC and getting back to the CFP. Rhett Lashlee believes he has upgraded Jennings’ supporting cast (particularly at the receiver position), and Jennings will be a major factor both through the air and on the ground if he stays healthy.
Louisville
Jeff Brohm knows how to win big games. He’s done it many times over the course of his head coaching career, first at Purdue and now at Louisville. We saw him do it last year, knocking off previously unbeaten Miami in mid-October. The Cardinals’ ability to take that next step forward — getting back to the ACC championship game, into the CFP picture — will come down to their ability to take care of business against the teams they should beat soundly. That’s especially true this year, without Miami on the regular-season schedule. If Brohm can work his quarterback magic with Lincoln Kienholz to pair with what should be an elite rushing attack, Louisville will be exactly where it wants to be come late November. `
Also in the mix: Clemson, Pitt
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Are Indiana, Miami still being overlooked?
Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry offer their reactions to the preseason coaches’ poll, primarily the rankings of last season’s finalists in Indiana and Miami.
The ACC coach with the hottest seat
Mike Norvell, Florida State. There is not a college football coach with a seat hotter than this one. Norvell has gone 7-17 in the past two years, a far cry from that undefeated regular season and ACC title in 2023. The falloff from that season was swift and genuinely stunning, and there are myriad reasons for it — bad quarterback evaluations, portal misses, scheme issues, what have you. It’s wild to recall that last season began with FSU’s win over Alabama, which seemed to signal a return to national relevancy and a strong rebound for the Seminoles off that dreadful 2-10 season … only to lead to an 0-4 start in ACC play and a 5-7 final record. Norvell was fortunate to keep his job at all, but a buyout of nearly $60 million turned out to be prohibitive for the FSU brass to make a change. So, Norvell gets another chance with a new (and perhaps underwhelming) starting quarterback, a totally new offensive line and a daunting schedule. The Seminoles have a return trip to Tuscaloosa in addition to an ACC schedule that includes SMU and Clemson at home and road trips to Miami, Louisville and Pitt. That’s a tall task for a coach who probably needs to win at least eight games to keep his job.
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ACC award predictions
Coach of the Year: Tosh Lupoi, Cal. I don’t think the Golden Bears are going to be true ACC contenders, but they are going to make some noise. I don’t know if that’s an actual upset here or there or just scaring one of the league’s top CFP contenders, but there will absolutely be a moment in time this fall where we’re all talking about Cal. Lupoi’s first big win as the new Bears head coach came when he kept quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele in the fold. JKS was already one of the most exciting young quarterbacks in the country, but now Lupoi is giving him some great pieces to work with. Cal added a trio of impact receivers — Rutgers transfer Ian Strong, Ohio transfer Chase Hendricks and New Mexico transfer Dorian Thomas — that should make for a strong passing attack. Couple that with a defense molded in Lupoi’s image, and this is a program on the rise and a team that genuinely could surprise some people.
Offensive Player of the Year: Malachi Toney, Miami. Toney still has two college football seasons to play before he’s eligible for the NFL draft, which is kind of crazy because of how good he already is. But it’s also great for college football fans, because we get to watch one of the most electrifying players in the sport this fall play in what should be one of the nation’s best offenses. If Toney puts up the kind of numbers we all know he’s capable of, he’ll find himself in the middle of the Heisman Trophy race.
Defensive Player of the Year: Sammy Brown, Clemson. Brown came to Clemson as one of the highest-rated recruits in program history, and he has delivered in each of his first two years in a Tiger uniform Last year, he led the team with 106 tackles, 13.5 for a loss, five sacks, five pass deflections, one interception and one forced fumble. Davis will be relied upon to do even more this fall — anchoring a position group that enters the season facing a lot of questions — in a league filled with spectacular offensive skill players. If Clemson is going to bounce back this year, it’ll be because the defense leads the way. And Brown would be a huge part of that.
Must-see ACC matchups
Sept. 19: SMU at Louisville
Oct. 3: Miami at Clemson
Oct. 31: Clemson at Florida State
Nov. 7: Miami at Notre Dame*
Nov. 21: Virginia Tech at Miami
* I know we said we’d exclude Notre Dame from the ACC preview, but c’mon. We can’t ignore this one!
