After Oklahoma cruised past Auburn in Monday night’s Sugar Bowl, college football’s 2016-17 bowl season is nearing its finale. The only game left? Next Monday’s national championship game between Alabama and Clemson, a rematch of last year’s title tilt. That game — a 45-40 Alabama victory — concluded a dominant season for the Crimson Tide’s Southeastern Conference, one that punctuated the first nine-win bowl season by a single conference in college history.
But in a surprise twist, it’s Clemson and the Atlantic Coast Conference — not Alabama and the SEC — that are winning the bowl battle once we adjust for expectations. And with the Tigers carrying the conference’s banner into the title game, the ACC has a chance to top last year’s SEC for the most impressive bowl season ever.
The ACC has gone 8-3 this bowl season, already the second-most wins by a conference in a single bowl season since the AP poll era started in 1936. (Of course, because bowl season has become so bloated in recent years, this year’s ACC teams have also played in the third-most bowls ever, tied with four other conferences since 2013.) But the ACC’s record is still notable because of its difficulty: FiveThirtyEight’s Elo ratings — which estimate the relative quality of every FBS team — would have expected an average team to go 3-8 against ACC teams’ bowl opponents, losing by an average of 2.7 points per game. Instead, ACC teams have won by 7.6 points per game. That five-win gap between the ACC’s bowl record and what Elo would have expected from an average group of teams is easily the biggest of any conference this season:
| VS. EXPECTED | VS. FBS AVERAGE | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CONFERENCE | BOWLS | WINS | POINT DIFF./GAME | WINS | POINT DIFF./GAME | WINS |
| ACC | 11 | 8 | +10.3 | +3.2 | +18.5 | +5.0 |
| SEC | 12 | 6 | -0.5 | -0.3 | +11.0 | +2.7 |
| Big 12 | 6 | 4 | +7.3 | +0.9 | +19.1 | +2.7 |
| Pac-12 | 6 | 3 | -10.3 | -0.4 | +5.8 | +1.5 |
| Sun Belt | 6 | 4 | +5.8 | +1.7 | +1.4 | +1.0 |
| Big Ten | 10 | 3 | -4.2 | -1.5 | +6.4 | +0.8 |
| Independent | 2 | 2 | -8.5 | +0.4 | -6.1 | +0.5 |
| MWC | 7 | 4 | +2.9 | +0.1 | +2.9 | +0.1 |
| CUSA | 7 | 4 | +1.2 | +0.5 | -2.1 | -0.0 |
| American | 7 | 2 | -9.5 | -2.5 | -3.0 | -1.5 |
| MAC | 6 | 0 | -4.5 | -2.1 | -5.7 | -2.3 |
It’s also the second-biggest gap for any conference since 1936, trailing only the SEC’s 5.9 excess wins of a season ago.42 If Clemson knocks off the historically dominant Crimson Tide in the CFP championship game — and Elo gives that scenario a 33 percent chance of happening — the ACC would take over the No. 1 slot.43
Now, there are a few caveats to be had there. Although the ACC has won far more than we’d expect against a very tough slate of opponents, it’s also gotten a little lucky in the process. According to the Pythagorean formula, which generates an expected record based on the points a team scores and allows, the ACC’s bowl record should be more like 7-4 than 8-3, which matters when discussing the razor-thin margins atop all-time leaderboards. Relatedly, its adjusted scoring margin (+18.5) doesn’t even rank No. 1 this season; the Big 12 has a +19.1 mark, albeit in half as many games. By contrast, the SEC was +25.6 in bowls last season.
ACC teams were favored by Elo in only four of the conference’s 11 bowls, and although one of those favorites lost (Pittsburgh in the Pinstripe Bowl), the rest of the ACC’s bowl teams picked up the slack with five upset victories. (Including Clemson’s 31-0 rout of Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl.44) When the SEC won nine bowls last season, it was only a slight improvement on the 7.3 they were expected to win going into the bowls. The ACC’s eight wins this year are much more out of step with the 4.8 wins Elo would have predicted, a gap that will grow to 5.5 wins if Clemson upsets Alabama.
Regardless of how much good fortune has been involved, however, the ACC has been the class of this year’s bowls. And a Clemson victory on Monday night would add more than just one bragging right to the conference’s trophy case.