FSU lands third-most first-place votes in ACC Media Poll - still picked 7th

​The ACC media poll is in and FSU is predicted to finish seventh in the conference.

Clemson was the runaway favorite, collecting 167 first-place votes of the 183 media members that submitted a ballot. Miami had seven first-place votes and edged out SMU for second place. Oddly enough, FSU had the third-most first-place votes with four. SMU and Georgia Tech had two first-place votes and someone gave Virginia Tech a first-place vote. 

As you can see, the Seminoles are picked in the middle between Duke and UNC. This is probably the first time in the history of the ACC preseason that Duke is predicted above FSU. 

FSU will face the Tigers and Hurricanes this season, but no other teams predicted to finish in the top eight. The Seminoles will also play the three teams predicted to finish in the bottom four (Stanford, Wake Forest and Virginia). 

Last year FSU was predicted to finish first, slightly ahead of the eventual conference champion Clemson. 

My thoughts: FSU is where it should be

​This is about the area I expected. After last season it was going to be hard to predict a top-3 o top-5 conference finish for FSU, but there's also the belief that last season was an abomination and the Seminoles were not going to be that bad again.

It also helps that the conference schedule is very manageable. Sure, Clemson and Miami are going to be pretty tough, but FSU is going to have significant talent advantages over Stanford and Wake Forest. The fact that five of the eight conference opponents were projected to finish in the bottom half of the conference should give fans even more encouragement about this being a bounce-back season.

This also means there's a LOT of disagreement about where FSU will finish this season. The Seminoles finished with the third-most first-place votes but still outside the top five. Clearly, there are some believers and some non-believers among the ACC media.