ACC Roundup: Week Five, Which Looks Oddly Familiar

Here are ten things we know about the ACC following week 5's results:

1. North Carolina State is absolutely for real. You could be forgiven for doubting them, considering their first for games - all wins - were against two community colleges, a school that stopped playing football in 1972, and Jimmy John's Sandwich University. But they took it to Florida State from the opening kickoff and stayed in it largely to the end, when FSU's superior depth finally allowed them to put it away. NC State coach Dave Doeren was later forced to apologize for suggesting the FSU players had faked injury to slow down NC State's offense; this was a clear case of "just because it's true doesn't mean you can actually get away with saying it." But all things considered, the Pack might be the second-best team in the conference right now, which, considering last year's debacle, is an impressive place for them to be.
2. Local sports radio thinks UNC administrators understand that coach Larry Fedora is rebuilding from the ashes of heavy NCAA sanctions, and that he's still early in his tenure. As such, they think he's not on the hot seat. Everyone else in the Triangle sees a team that gave up 120 points over two weeks and let a freshman QB throw 6 TDs against them and starts speculating about getting Mack Brown back in town. When you give Clemson a lead too big for them to Clemson away, you're not a good football team.
3. Syracuse's uniforms looked like they were stolen from the mooks in a Syfy original space movie, or possibly a remake of Ice Pirates.
4. Notre Dame QB Everett Golson completed more consecutive passes than Syracuse completed passes, period. This game was nowhere near as close as it looked, and it only looked kind of close because Golson started treating the ball like it was radioactive at the end of the game.
5. Akron stomped Pitt. The only reason Pitt got 10 was because Akron's mom came out and made Akron be nice before Pitt went home with a bloody nose and without its best toys. I realize that the ACC has a pretty gaudy record against non conference opponents thus far, but if you dig a little deeper and get past the fact that everyone in the conference has beaten Tulane twice, things get a little more dicey. Yes, everyone's feasted on enough cupcakes to get bowl-eligible if they get anywhere near .500 in conference play, but that doesn't mean they're good.
6. I'm pretty sure this means Colorado State is better than USC.
7. Duke-Miami was supposed to feature roughly nine gazillion points. Instead, the teams combined for something like 4 third down conversions. That's f-o-u-r. Out of 29. Which means that either the Duke and Miami defenses have both improved mightily, or those high-powered offenses aren't as high-powered as all that.
8. Does anyone else think Duke coach David Cutcliffe is starting to look like British actor Toby Jones? If he starts sending each play call in with an added "Hail HYDRA", I guess we'll know for sure.
9. Kudos to Virginia and VT for picking themselves up off the mat after rough games. The soft underbelly of the MAC is useful for that sort of thing, but then again: Pitt.
10. Notre Dame is not an ACC football team. It is an ACC basketball team, because nobody gives a damn about Notre Dame basketball and they can't write their own ticket, and as such they're happy to ride in the league's slipstream. But Notre Dame football is very much its own thing, and trying to claim it for the ACC smacks a little of desperation - and of trying to scrub a non-conference loss off the books.