Miami is picked to do something it’s never done before: win the Atlantic Coast Conference title.
The Hurricanes are the favorites to win the ACC, which released its preseason picks Tuesday. The Hurricanes were the easy headliner after last year’s run to the College Football Playoff title game, receiving 165 of 188 first-place votes from media members credentialed for the league’s preseason football media days earlier this month.
That put Miami well ahead of SMU — which is pushing three-year starting QB Kevin Jennings as a Heisman Trophy candidate — Louisville and Clemson among the top picks in the 17-team race.
Georgia Tech was picked fifth, followed by Virginia, N.C. State, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh and reigning champion Duke.
Florida State was next at 11th, followed by California, Wake Forest and Syracuse. North Carolina is picked 15th for its second season under NFL coaching great Bill Belichick, followed by Boston College and Stanford.
Miami enters this season with a high-profile quarterback addition in Duke transfer Darian Mensah. He joins a team that beat Texas A&M, Ohio State and Mississippi in the CFP before falling to Indiana in Mario Cristobal’s fourth season as coach, a run that amounted to $20 million in revenue for the Hurricanes through the ACC’s “success initiative” allowing teams to keep money generated by their own postseason success.
“Definitely that all the little things matter,” running back Mark Fletcher Jr. said of lessons from the CFP run. “It takes an entire team to reach that end goal. It can’t be just one side, it’s got to be everybody. … Me and the leaders, we’re going to continue to emphasize that message going into a great summer and finish it off in the fall camp going into the season.”
The Hurricanes joined the ACC ahead of the 2004 season but have yet to win a championship. This is only the second time Miami has been voted as the preseason favorite, the other coming in 2006. It reached the ACC championship game only once (2017).
The Hurricanes nearly have made it the past two years while going a combined 23-6 overall. In 2024, Miami was poised to play for the ACC title before blowing a 21-0 lead and losing on the road to Syracuse to end the regular season.
Then, last year, the Hurricanes were edged out by five-loss Duke in a five-team tiebreaker for the right to play Virginia. The Mensah-led Blue Devils beat the Cavaliers for the program’s first outright ACC title since 1962, while the Hurricanes pushed past Notre Dame in the final rankings for a CFP bid that ultimately turned into a remarkable run to the doorstep of a national title.
The ACC has since revised its tiebreaker policy in a move that would’ve put Miami in the league title game instead of Duke.
That’s not the only change for this year. The ACC is transitioning to a nine-game football schedule to align with its fellow power conferences. But the odd number of teams means there will be variables, with 12 teams playing nine games and five remaining at eight this season in what will be a bridge year toward having 16 of 17 teams regularly playing nine games by 2027.