Things We Know About ACC Football, 2016 Edition

1. The ACC is, despite some overheated statements made when it looked like Louisville was A Thing, not the best football conference in the country. It's not even second. It was fun to dream for a while, but, no. 
2. North Carolina is the new Clemson. Every time they snuck up to the edge of the national stage, they promptly horked up a hairball. (Yes, I compared losing to Duke and NC State to a wad of stinky nastiness from the nameless abyssal depths of your cat's digestive tract. Deal with it.) If this keeps up, we'll have to stop calling it Clemsoning and start calling it Tarheeling. 
3. Boston College is bowl eligible. Just going to let that sit there for a minute.
4. By and large, nobody in this conference can string together three decent defensive performances in a row. See also: Pitt 76, Syracuse 61.
5. Speaking of Syracuse, they're actually showing signs of life, as Virginia Tech found out. If Cuse and BC get their act even partially together, life suddenly gets a lot harder for all the middle-tier teams in the conference who were counting on those two gimme wins to pad their way to 8-4 every year.  Kudos to Dino Babers for making Syracuse sneak up on being relevant again.
6. Speaking of Virginia Tech, it appears that an offense has been sighted on campus. It is frightened and skittish and prone to freeze when startled in hopes of avoiding predators, but it's there. Combine that with the standard tenacious Hokie D, and things might get very interesting. 
7. Miami is as Mark Richt a team as ever Richted a Mark. They will beat almost everyone they're supposed to, lose to everyone they're supposed to, win somewhere between 8 and 10 games, and go to a good, not great bowl with talent that should have landed them someplace much better than the Popeyes Bahama Bowl or whatever.
8. Funny how no one in ACC country tried to claim Notre Dame as a virtual conference member this year, isn't it.
9. It was fun while it lasted, Louisville, especially when you put the beatdown on Florida State. But rivalry game or no rivalry game, you don't lose to Kentucky at football and expect people to take you seriously. You're talking about a program whose highlights are Tim Couch and Jared Lorenzen. You're not even allowed to think about the playoff for another two years now.