CBS Sports ACC

[Graceland Tar Heel]

Overrated and Underrated teams

Most underrated team
SMU: Call me crazy, but I don't think SMU's jump to the ACC is going to be much of one. Sonny Dykes and Rhett Lashlee have carefully built this program up to Power Four level. The Mustangs get Florida State at home. Their toughest road game is at Louisville a week later. No Clemson. Everybody has seemed to have dismissed that Lashlee has kept this thing cooking after Dykes' departure. Last year's 11-3 team that won the American was arguably SMU's best since the 1980s.

SMU has a billionaire sugar daddy who organized the move to the ACC. With access to better players, the Ponies should compete with the ACC's elite. Fourteen starters return to a program that finished in the top 11 in scoring offense and defense. Watch Miami transfer tailback Brashard Smith, who caught 69 passes in three years with the 'Canes. Last year, he scored rushing, receiving and special teams touchdowns. -- Dodd (Palm)

The problem potentially in Dodd's pick is that he has a very long history of hating the ACC almost as bad as if he had applied to UVA, UNC, Dook, GT and Wake and gotten rejected among the very first rejects for each school.

[1983 Cotton Bowl]

I am not in the prediction game, but the statement that "SMU has a billionaire sugar daddy. . . " is not entirely accurate. In fact, SMU has several billionaire sugar daddies.

[Charleston Pony]

And there is this:

Shehan Jeyarajah (of CBS): Both Florida State and Clemson will get locked out of the ACC Championship Game. Instead, programs like Miami, NC State, SMU and Louisville will finally break through and give the ACC a third unique team in the College Football Playoff since the format started in 2014. The reign of the titans is over, which will only add more agitation in the FSU and Clemson board rooms.

[ShantyBoy]

Dodd did pick the Mustangs to finish second in the league.

[1983 Cotton Bowl]

Dodd did pick the Mustangs to finish second in the league.

That strikes me as a tad aggressive. I'd be happy with a bowl, anything beyond that would be gravy.