Mark your calendars, guys. Week one of the 2025 college football season will soon be here to make your days. The opener week is the key that unlocks all that makes college football so exciting. Fans get to see their favorite players making their debut. And, programs set the tone for the rest of the season with those first matchups. We have some big-time, high-octane games coming up, including the openers for Miami and Clemson. However, a national analyst thought that Jim Phillips was instead set for downfall, before the ACC could begin its drive in the season.

Entering Week 1, some teams have no reason to worry at all, but some others will be giving their all to prove skeptics wrong. Some head coaches come with their jobs on the line, like Lincoln Riley in his 4 season at USC. But to Josh Pate, it is the ACC that might be nosediving before it even gets the chance to take off. That would mean Carson Beck goes down again, along with Mario Cristobal’s repute. Clemson may be able to withstand such a fall, given how strong its outlook is for the season. But having just one team shine will once again bring the ACC trolls back into action.

In a July 19 episode of That SEC Podcast, he sounded an alarm for the collapse of the ACC, so much so that even playoff spots could be lost by the conference. When Cousin Shane asked Pate which league would enter the season with the impending sound of sirens, Pate answered right off the bat. “ACC. Oh, by 10 miles, ACC. ACC could have a disaster week one,” he said. ACC will see some high-stakes games in the opening week itself. The biggest of them will be Georgia Tech-Colorado, TCU-UNC, Alabama-FSU (this one’s going to be fiery!) LSU-Clemson and Miami-Notre Dame. So yes, Jim Phillips will not be able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the season at the beginning.

“These are all games you’re going to be either a short favorite in or a dog in.  And your conference could have an utter disaster on its hands,” Pate said. These are teams that have a lot of elements that will be question marks until game day. We won’t know for sure how Carson Beck will lead Miami until the Notre Dame game, and he’s coming off a nightmare 2024 season. Then there’s Bill Belichick at UNC, debuting in college football in a rather glitzy College Station. FSU‘s Mike Norvell and his attention-grabbing QB will begin their redemption campaign against the juggernaut, coming off a 2-10 season. Yep, Phillips is in for a lot from the get-go.

However, not all of the games will be on the extremes. Take the LSU-Clemson game, for example, which is an on-par competition for both the Tigers squads. Dabo Swinney‘s Clemson can upset LSU, but Garrett Nussmeier and Co. have an equal opportunity of setting in motion the other result. If Clemson does lose, it would be a well-fought battle, and wouldn’t bite as much. It’s all these other games that stand to tip the scale off balance for the ACC, if the worst happens.

“I’m thinking about where we ended up last year. We had like an SMU-Alabama debate, or an SMU-Ole Miss, SMU-South Carolina. But it was SMU and an SEC team. And if your conference implodes in on itself in week one, that’s going to be held against you,” Pate said out loud, unwaveringly. With so many important ACC programs going in the first week itself, it does make it difficult for the conference to create a reputation. These are big-name programs, but are also ones that come with a lot of risk. And in the end, it could all come down to those nail-biting results one more time when it comes to the playoffs.

Jim Phillips is in for more trouble if ACC programs lose in Week 1

The playoffs are where the strength of schedule plays an immense role, and were under fire last season for not being judged fairly. But along with the strength, the onus is also on programs to play accordingly based on it. It’s why SMU made the playoffs instead of Alabama last season. This time, ACC will be at risk once again, with its playoff hopes dangling from the success of maybe very few teams. Especially if it begins the season on such a bad note.

“Maybe you’re 10-2, and maybe that SEC team’s 9-3. But if the SEC’s shined an out-of-conference play, and just beat up on itself, and you guys couldn’t get the job done, and you just like, fumbled it fantastically out of the gate, that to me from a conference standpoint, like that’s a huge storyline in week one,” Pate said, continuing to throw shade at the ACC. If all the programs begin their runs with losses, it’s going to dent their already limited chances of playoff spots.

The ACC’s 2025 season is extremely unpredictable; no one knows what could happen and when. It has elements that stand as its biggest strengths, and also threaten its success at the same time. With such uncertain elements in play, Jim Phillips won’t be able to catch a break as he awaits the results of how the member teams play in the opening week.