Rhett Lashlee has done the math. It rolls around in the SMU coach’s head every week. The more he thinks about it, the more it doesn’t add up.

Why, Lashlee wonders, is the Atlantic Coast Conference fighting what seems to be an uphill battle for respect from the College Football Playoff committee?

“To look at our league and say, ‘Well we may be a one-bid league,’ but you look at another league (the Big Ten) that we have a winning record against, and say ‘Oh they’re going to get four in,’ ” Lashlee said Tuesday, a few hours before the latest CFP rankings had the Mustangs (8-1 overall, 5-0 ACC) as the second team out of the coveted top 12. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Over the summer, the college football paradigm shifted following the latest round of realignment, with the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference adding bluebloods like USC, Oregon and Texas and the ACC welcoming less-revered programs SMU, Cal and Stanford. What ACC officials and Lashlee’s coaching brethren feared seems to be playing out.

“The disrespect (was) there preseason,” Pittsburgh coach Narduzzi said. “I’m sure it’s there midseason.”

Narduzzi, whose team is at 7-2 overall and 3-2 in the league with nonconference wins over Big 12 members Cincinnati and West Virginia, believes the ACC is the best league in the country, pointing to parity as proof of its competitiveness. Shouldn’t Georgia Tech toppling Miami and Louisville taking down Clemson in Death Valley be proof of the depth of the league as a whole?

Apparently not.

“It hurts when you’re beating each other up, no question about it,” Narduzzi said.

If you play in the ACC anyway.

It doesn’t appear to be much of an issue in the SEC, where Alabama and Ole Miss find themselves inside the projected CFP field in mid-November despite having multiple conference losses, with another two-loss team (Georgia) two spots above SMU at No. 12 in the current bracket. As it stands now, the Bulldogs would not make the 12-team playoff because No. 13 Boise State would take the final spot instead as the fifth-best conference champion.

The road for the ACC to get multiple teams into the CFP is narrowing by the week. The best case would seem to be for SMU and Miami to win out followed by a well-played and tightly contested ACC championship game.

Warde Manuel, the CFP Selection Committee chair, said the Mustangs and Hurricanes have been impressive. What he didn’t have to say is that only one of them has been impressive enough to merit a spot in the top 12 when the second, third and fourth-place teams in the SEC and Big Ten are both comfortably in the field for now.

The irony is that the fourth-place team in the ACC (Louisville) may be the second-hottest team in the conference behind SMU. Clemson is currently in third and could keep its hopes of an ACC title game berth alive with a victory at Pitt on Saturday, with a shot to further bolster its CFP at-large hopes by downing rival South Carolina the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Swinney struggles to understand how some narratives shift and others don’t. Virginia Tech began its season with an overtime loss on the road at Vanderbilt. It looked like a red flag at the time. Now — with the Commodores in the midst of a renaissance — not so much.

“Everybody is like, ‘Oh, the league stinks, you lost to Vanderbilt,’ ” Swinney said. “Well, I think Vanderbilt beat Alabama and Auburn. I think they’re pretty good. And that was a touchdown game in Nashville with Virginia Tech.”

The same Virginia Tech team that took Miami to the last play in September and handled Georgia Tech in October, two weeks before the Yellow Jackets handed Heisman Trophy candidate Cam Ward and the Hurricanes their first loss.

In the SEC, that sort of “Any Given Saturday” approach is celebrated. The ACC does not seem to be getting the same benefit of the doubt.

“When other leagues beat each other up internally, they’re considered a deep, solid league,” Lashlee said. “When we beat up (each other) internally, we’re considered a weak league.”

It doesn’t help that defending league champion Florida State — the same program that has sued the ACC in search of an escape plan — has nose-dived from preseason top 10 to the school’s worst season in 50 years.

AP writers Aaron Beard, Stephen Hawkins, Charles Odum and Pete Iacobelli contributed.