The ACC’s nightmare scenario almost played out on Sunday, but thanks to a curious decision by the CFP selection committee, the conference has one team in.
It’s just not conference champion Duke, which took down No. 17 Virginia 27-20 in overtime on Saturday night in the ACC title game.
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The Blue Devils’ first conference title since 1962 won’t result in a College Football Playoff bid. The win over the Cavaliers puts Duke at 8-5 and they were left out of the playoff bracket since there were five other conference champs that were ranked ahead of them.
The playoff is made up of the five highest-ranked conference champions and seven at-large teams. Indiana, Georgia and Texas Tech all won their conference title games on Saturday, and were ranked inside the top four.
No. 20 Tulane won the American Conference on Friday, which guaranteed the Green Wave a spot and they were slotted in as the No. 11 seed. The Blue Devils were hoping they could slide ahead of James Madison after winning their matchup with Virginia, but their five losses on the season proved to be too much in the eyes of the committee and they didn’t finish in the Top 25. James Madison was ranked No. 24 and thus given the No. 12 seed. The Dukes’ reward is a trip to Eugene to take on No. 5 Oregon on Dec. 20.
Duke went 6-2 in the ACC but 1-3 outside the conference. The Blue Devils lost to Illinois, Tulane and UConn in non-conference play but won a five-way tie for second behind Virginia thanks to the winning percentage of the team’s opponents. Duke’s opponents had a better conference record than the teams that SMU, Miami, Pitt and Georgia Tech all played. Those four teams were all tied with Duke for second.
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Duke coach Manny Diaz said after the game that his team was a playoff-caliber team.
The committee, as it turned out, disagreed with Diaz.
And so Duke will be the first power conference champion left out of the field in the 12-team playoff era.
Miami backdoors into CFP on at-large bid
With those five conferences set to take the automatic berths, the ACC’s lone hope hinged on the grace of the committee.
With Alabama remaining at No. 9 for the second straight week, it came down to Miami or Notre Dame, which had been ranked ahead of the Hurricanes for the majority of the season despite losing their head-to-head matchup in Week 2.
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The committee decided, rather arbitrarily, to finally bump Miami up to No. 10 in the final rankings and leave Notre Dame out of the playoff. That gave the Hurricanes the final at-large bid in the field.
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