Pat Narduzzi wasted no time calling out pollsters for undervaluing the ACC after Pittsburgh’s 5-0 start. Moments after the Panthers held on to beat Virginia Tech on the road Friday night, with a last-second missed 36-yard field goal deciding the game, Narduzzi demanded that voters “wake your (butts) up.” The Pitt coach said this directly to AP Top 25 voters, just as he had promised ACC commissioner Jim Phillips he would.
The Panthers, who sneaked into the latest poll at No. 25, aren’t the only ACC team flying under the radar. Narduzzi’s frustration isn’t limited to his program but extends to the whole conference, which he described as being “disrespectful” by the rankings that keep the ACC underappreciated despite strong starts.
Before the game against Virginia Tech, it was noted that it was the first time two Power Four teams entered a matchup with identical 4-0 records—yet neither was ranked. Narduzzi said this kind of oversight is connected to the obsession with the “brands” of conferences like the Big Ten and SEC. “Everybody wants to look at the logo and gets all infatuated with logos and all that stuff,” he said.
The Big Ten currently has six teams ranked, the SEC has nine, while the ACC has just three: Miami at No. 4, SMU at 24, and Pitt at 25. Narduzzi acknowledged his own conflicted feelings about polls. Earlier this season, he said early rankings didn’t matter much, but at 60 years old, he sees the polls in the “proper perspective” now.
He took a swipe at an unnamed program that was in the Top 25 earlier in the season but has since dropped out. “I mean, you look at the school down the road gets into the Top 25, and what did they really do to get into the Top 25?” Narduzzi said, laughing when asked who he meant. Both West Virginia and Penn State fit that description. Penn State began the season ranked 18th but fell out after two conference losses, while West Virginia briefly appeared in the Top 25 after a win over Virginia but faltered afterward.
The Panthers face a tougher road ahead without their starting quarterback Mason Heintschel, who tore the ACL in his right knee during the Virginia Tech game. Senior Holden Gernier will take over, but the injury adds to the challenge of maintaining Pitt’s unbeaten run.
Other ACC teams with strong starts are also being overlooked. Wake Forest is 4-1, with a narrow loss against Miami, and recent wins over Purdue, Louisville, and a 54-point rout of Stanford, the largest blowout in ACC history for a charter member. Duke is unbeaten at 4-0 with a road win over Illinois, yet neither team is ranked.
Narduzzi, on a rare day off, watched games from the Big Ten and SEC but kept switching back to ACC teams, including North Carolina, which will visit Pitt on Saturday. He said watching those leagues alongside his own gave him a sense of the work ahead for his team and the conference.
The ACC hopes the conversation around the league will shift so that a loss within the conference doesn’t cause a team to plummet in the rankings, unlike the current situation. Voters showed some leniency to Mississippi State this week, dropping them just one spot after a heavy loss to Alabama, but that kind of treatment is rare for ACC teams.
Despite Miami’s run to last season’s College Football Playoff final and the conference’s expansion to 12 CFP teams, the ACC’s reputation remains tied closely to the Hurricanes alone. Other teams continue to fight to prove the league’s overall strength.
Narduzzi intends to keep pushing that point, even as Pitt faces a challenging stretch without Heintschel. Whoever rises to the top of the ACC standings in early December, he insists, deserves serious recognition in the polls.
According to Yahoo Sports.
