Miami is picked to do something it鈥檚 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 , receiving 165 of 188 first-place votes from media members credentialed for the league鈥檚 preseason football media days earlier this month.
That put Miami well ahead of SMU 鈥� which is 鈥� 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 , followed by Boston College and Stanford.
Miami enters this season with . 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 allowing teams to keep money generated by their own postseason success.
鈥淒efinitely that all the little things matter,鈥� running back Mark Fletcher Jr. said of lessons from the CFP run. 鈥淚t takes an entire team to reach that end goal. It can鈥檛 be just one side, it鈥檚 got to be everybody. … Me and the leaders, we鈥檙e going to continue to emphasize that message going into a great summer and finish it off in the fall camp going into the season.鈥�
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 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 , 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.
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 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.
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