College football writer Phil Steele predicted his order of finish for the ACC ahead of the 2025 college football season. It should be a competitive race for the conference crown and some College Football Playoff spots.

Clemson returns as the defending ACC champions and is projected to perhaps do so again. SMU, Miami and maybe a couple of other teams could have something to say about that.

Without further ado, let’s dive into how the ACC could wind up this year. We start at the top!

Clemson is the favorite in the ACC and the projected top team per Steele. Cade Klubnik is back under center following a career year.

Sure, he’s the headliner on the team in 2025, but Dabo Swinney has a solid defense. There are two potential first round picks on the defense line: TJ Parker and Peter Woods.

SMU made the ACC title game last season against Clemson, lost, but still made the College Football Playoff. We’ll see if that’s still the case this coming season.

Kevin Jennings returns as the QB and it’ll help to have WR Jordan Hudson (no, not the one you’re thinking of), TE RJ Maryland and offensive linemen such as Addison Nichols, Logan Parr and PJ Williams up front.

Miami landed Carson Beck in the transfer portal from Georgia to replace Cam Ward at QB. That was the biggest get for their offseason and they are squarely in the ACC title mix.

Running back Mark Fletcher will be key in the backfield, as well as WR CJ Daniels. On defense, DE Rueben Bain, CB OJ Frederique and LB Wesley Bissainthe will be key to the entire unit.

Steele likes what Brent Key is doing at Georgia Tech and has them in the upper tier of the ACC this season. On offense, WR Eric Rivers and offensive lineman Keylan Rutledge are stars to watch, with QB Haynes King getting them the ball.

Not to mention, RB Jamal Haynes is a stud as well. Defensive tackle Jordan van der Berg should be a problem for opposing offensive lines as well.

Florida State was a disaster last year, but Steele likes them to finish within the top five of the ACC this season. QB Thomas Castellanos has the talent, but also a ton of confidence that some are hoping won’t backfire when FSU plays Alabama to open the year.

Some other playmakers include WR Duce Robinson and CB Jeremiah Wilson. Head coach Mike Norvell really needs a bounce back campaign.

Jeff Brohm and company were picked to finish in the top half of the ACC by Steele for the 2025 season. Isaac Brown and Caullin Lacy should be fun to watch at RB and WR. Transfer QB Miller Moss has a lot of eyes on him after leaving USC.

Linebacker Stanquan Clark leads the defense for the Cardinals this season. Defensive linemen Clev Lubin, Rene Konga and TJ Quinn should be circled on the film too.

The ACC gets some new blood with Bill Belichick this season. The Tar Heels are like Colorado when Deion Sanders took over in 2023: everything will be microanalyzed.

As far as what the Tar Heels have, RB Davion Gause will be interesting to watch, as well as offensive lineman Daniel King. On defense, watch out for CB Thaddeus Dixon.

Pitt is projected to be just above the middle of the ACC this coming season, per Steele. They’re coming off a 7-6 season, losing to Toledo in the GameAbove Sports Bowl.

RB Desmond Reid is back in the fold, along with center Lyndon Cooper leading the charge up front on the offensive line. Kenny Johnson will add to the skill on offense at WR and linebacker Kyle Lewis will be one to watch on the opposite side of the ball. Oh yeah, Reid is one of the best returnmen in the country too.

NC State is projected to finish in the middle of the pack, per Steele. Can they rise up the ACC this season? It remains to be seen.

TE Justin Joly might be flying under the radar outside the conference, but Steele has him on his preseason first-team. Linebacker Sean Brown is also a stud and should be a menace for opposing defenses.

Duke played really well under Manny Diaz last season. However, Steele has the Blue Devils in the middle tier of the ACC going into 2025.

There are some preseason first-team players though, such as OT Brian Parker and DB Chandler Rivers. Perhaps the Blue Devils are under the radar.

Brent Pry seems to be pushing some right buttons, but the Hokies have yet to get over that hump. Steele has them below the median in the ACC.

As far as the players on Steele’s All-ACC list, it starts at the second-team with offensive lineman Tomas Rimac. TE Benji Gosnell is also a player to watch for the Hokies this season.

Fran Brown had an awesome debut season with the Orange. It helped that QB Kyle McCord was under center, but now he’s off to the NFL.

Steele has Syracuse taking a step back in the ACC this coming season. Still, with the way Brown coaches and recruits, don’t be surprised if this time stuns a few people.

Tony Elliott needs a breakthrough year and to get to the postseason. Steele thinks they can do it in this year’s ACC, but it won’t mean much in terms of the race for the conference crown.

There are nine returning starters for the Cavaliers this season. At some point, something has to give, whether Elliott takes a step forward with the program or not.

O’Brien had a great debut season with Boston College, going 7-6. However, Steele doesn’t like them to finish too far out of the basement of the ACC this year.

According to Steele, there’s 12 returning starters, but BC has the third toughest schedule in the conference. Some players to watch for are OL Logan Taylor and safety KP Price, named to Steele’s preseason All-ACC teams.

Justin Wilcox is on the hot seat, Steele writes. Finishing near the bottom of the ACC won’t help that narrative either.

The Bears felt some losses in the transfer portal and don’t have much star power represented in the preseason right now. We’ll see if Cal can surprise some people this fall.

Jake Dickert takes over as head coach after coming over from Washington State. He did a solid job out west but it might take some time to get it going in the ACC.

The good news is, Dickert and Wake had 11 returning starters and attacked the transfer portal. So maybe some good news is on the way in Year 1.

At the bottom of the ACC for Steele is Stanford, which goes into 2025 with Frank Reich as the interim head coach and former QB Andrew Luck in his role as GM, looking to resurrect the program. How this goes is anyone’s guess, but Steele maintained he wasn’t the only one to pick Stanford to finish last.

Tight end Sam Roush should be a player to watch out for on offense. Others are offensive lineman Simione Pale and kicker Emmet Kenney.

The moment that former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel stepped on the gridiron, all eyes instantly gravitated toward him.

LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson didn’t hold back regarding the talent the Tigers have been able to attract to the program. Especially when it comes to the pitching department.

Johnson has led LSU to two national championships over the last three years and it seems like the program breeds pitching. Home grown or transfer portal, it doesn’t matter. Heck, look at Paul Skenes coming over from Air Force and is now one of the premier aces in Major League Baseball.

So, Johnson already made his recruiting pitch for anyone in the portal. If you want to be a star and win in 2026, come to Baton Rouge.

“When I came here, it was obviously LSU, there were great foundational players in the program. Dylan Crewes, best player I’ve ever coached. You know, got to coach him for two years. Tre Morgan, those guys, but we really had to elevate the talent, pitching talent, to compete for a national championship, and we’ve been able to do that,” Johnson told Sirius XM. “So I’d say the first effort is the recruiting effort, you know, with our whole staff … and really trying to track those top guys. Then it’s, you know, a lot of programs will talk about developing but you can really point to the track record right now. (In) 2023, we broke an SEC record for players drafted.

“I think it was 13. I think nine of those were pitchers. Last year we had nine pitchers drafted again, which was also an SEC record. Yeah, the number one pick was Skenes. I think Kade Anderson’s got a great chance to be the number one pick.” 

The proof is in the pudding for Johnson and LSU. It’s not just his words and promises, it’s the action on the baseball diamond. If LSU goes onto win another title next season, in large part due to pitching, then it’s just the latest example of their pitching factory.

“You can not objectively look at it and go, like especially if you’re a transfer portal pitcher, nobody has a better plan for you for one year to get where you want to go than LSU,” Johnson said. “I think over the past 20 years, there is no argument that the best pitching coach in college baseball (is Nate Yeskie) I’ve been to Omaha with four different programs, won national championships now with two. And then we have another director of pitching development named Jamie Tutko, who’s exceptional and blends coach Yeskie’s experience … to feel for players with a lot of this New Age stuff. 

“And then, my role is just deciding who and deciding when and having a relationship with player to know how to get them on track with what they need in the game at a certain time. And I just think it’s the spot. And I really believe that doing well at LSU helps players and pitchers more than doing well at other schools, and that impacts them in the Major League Baseball draft. We like what we have going right now, and we’re looking for the next wave as we speak.”

The NCAA could learn a lesson from the guacamole I made last week. The avocados were pristinely ripe, the tomatoes profoundly plump, and the spices masterfully balanced. My first taste test was so good, it generated an involuntary eyebrow raise. But then a small, never-satisfied voice in the back of my head urged me to make what was perfect even better. “Add salt,” it goaded. “Just a pinch to make this guac truly mind-blowing.” So, I did. After all, it was just a little bit more of a good thing, right? But with a single shake of the salt shaker, my perfect guacamole ceased to exist, diminished by my unsuppressible instinct for perpetual tweaking. It went from magnificent to mediocre with one bad decision.

The NCAA basketball tournament is my unsalted guacamole.

With 68 teams in the field, it is one of the best events in all of sports. The drama is exquisite, the competition impeccable, and for the NCAA overlords, the profits are bountiful. And yet, those same executives stuffing cash into crevices they didn’t even know existed are greedy for more, looking to squeeze every last drop of yolk from their golden goose.

In the coming weeks, the NCAA will decide on whether or not to expand the NCAA tournament to 76 games, effectively adding eight more at-large teams to the round currently dubbed the First Four. I’m sure there may be a few teams who find themselves consistently on Joe Lunardi’s bubble that would welcome a lower threshold for entry, but as CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander puts it, very few sports topics have less public support than changing the tournament.

Show me the money

Let’s be clear: this is not an effort to showcase a broader swath of collegiate talent on the national stage or any other faux competition-related rationale you might hear. This is an unadulterated money-grab, plain and simple. Eight more teams mean four additional games to which the NCAA can market and sell to CBS, which can, in turn, hawk advertisements to eyeball-hungry companies. That’s it.

To be fair, part of this financial desire is not for the Scrooge McDuck-like reasons I just stereotyped. In this emerging era of an increasingly growing number of bank accounts to which universities are legally obligated to contribute, the need for additional revenue isn’t purely buying a second yacht for the NCAA president. Ideally, these additional funds will be distributed to schools for their player budget.

It is a complicated payment model, but reports showed the SEC received $70 million from the 2025 NCAA tournament, money that, at least in part, filtered down to the schools. No doubt, more than a few athletic directors are channeling their inner Oliver Twist since the House settlement, holding out their empty bowl to their conference executives and sheepishly asking for more.

However, this fiscally-first line of thinking minimizes the importance of the beautiful product on the court to an ordinary product on a store shelf. Approaching this decision strictly in terms of profit casts aside the impact that expanding to 76 teams would have on the remarkable entity itself. Remember, March Madness isn’t just a collegiate tournament; it is a cultural event.

Don’t mess with a cultural phenomenon

All around the world, hardcore fanatics and casuals alike fill out brackets in both friendly and high-stakes competitions to determine the best prognosticator of their group. Of course, most online bracket challenges don’t even start until the first weekend, ignoring the First Four games out of the universal understanding that everyone has a handful of friends and coworkers who are never going to have their bracket filled out by Tuesday night.

Perhaps the same mindset of “The tournament doesn’t really start until Thursday” would persist if the First Four became the First Twelve, but if anything, this quirky truism exemplifies how meaningless those First Twelve games would be viewed.

Moreover, these additional eight teams, who would otherwise be making NIT plans, are not exactly going to showcase the best college basketball has to offer. This is going to be the equivalent of Wednesday of the SEC tournament, when a sub-.500 LSU team faces off against Vanderbilt in an empty arena. Sure, people will tune in because it is still technically the NCAA tournament, but it requires a level of sacrifice to postseason basketball quality that most fans are unwilling to make.

To stick with the food and drink analogies, expanding to 76 teams only dilutes an otherwise delicious jar of lemonade.

Is the NCAA going down a slippery slope to further expansion?

Why stop at 76? In 10 years, when players and coaches demand higher salaries, is the NCAA going to further dilute this tourney to 128? Over half of the teams in the NBA make the playoffs, so why not the NCAA? To answer my own sarcastic question, a 128-team tournament would be dumb and all but negate the importance of the regular season. 76 is a slippery slope to 128.

And to those arguing that the additional teams in the field could not make it far, history would disagree. In 2011, the very first year the tournament expanded to 68 teams, one of the last four teams in, VCU, made it to the Final Four. The randomness of the single elimination format is what makes March Madness great, but further expansion gives undue credence to mediocrity.

Everyone likes it when a 16 seed with 21 wins, like Fairleigh Dickinson, upsets a 1 seed, like Purdue, but no one is on the edge of their couch when Big-4 teams with losing records like Minnesota and Arizona State, battle on a Tuesday afternoon, despite both teams having the most gaudy color combination in sports.

Please don’t do this, NCAA

Admittedly, I was against the field’s expansion to 68 teams in 2011, and yet, I have grown to appreciate the First Four as the tournament appetizer it is. The shrimp cocktail before the main course. I’m sure we all have uncles who protested the field’s expansion to 64 teams in 1985 for many of the same reasons I’ve gone through, and yet they are the first people to fill out their brackets in the family pool. Things change, and people get used to the changes over time. Such is life.

But, I’m pleading with you, NCAA. Please, please, please don’t do this. I know money is tight lately and CBS is dangling dollars in front of your face like a hypnotist’s watch. But please don’t add any more salt to the guacamole. Don’t expand to 76. It is great as it is.