Wake Forest Picked to Finish 5th in Atlantic Division

The ACC media preseason poll has been released, and Wake Forest has been picked to finish in 5th place in the Atlantic Division, ahead of Louisville and Syracuse. The Deacs did not receive any votes to win the division or the ACC Championship game.

It’s not football season until the Deacs are voted near or at the bottom of the Atlantic Division for what feels like the 20th season in a row. A quick search of Wikipedia shows that the last time Wake was picked higher than 5th in the division in the preseason poll was the 2013 season (picked 4th), where the Deacs finished 4-8 and made a coaching change during the off season. That was actually not as far back as I thought it would have been.

Thankfully, these polls don’t mean anything and aside from getting fans excited for football season, can mostly just be ignored. I honestly don’t even have much of an issue with where Wake is in this poll, but Georgia Tech, who finished last season with a 3-7 record, has 4 votes to win the coastal. FOUR! If that wasn’t bad enough, they even got a vote to win the entire ACC, along with Virginia and NC State.

The Deacs were once picked to finish dead last in the Atlantic and ended up winning the ACC Championship game, so I guess there is always a chance that Georgia Tech steamrolls Clemson in Charlotte and marches on to the CFB Playoff. I’ll look pretty dumb if that happens, but until then, I’m just going to keep ignoring the preseason poll.