MIAMI (AP) \u2014 The Power 4 conference that didn\u2019t get its champion into the College Football Playoff has a team that tied for second playing in the CFP\u2019s national title game.<\/p>\n
So much for the demise of the Atlantic Coast Conference.<\/p>\n
The league that looked most vulnerable a few short years ago when the latest round of realignment shook up college sports is doing just fine.<\/p>\n
The best proof comes out of Miami, a second-place finisher in the ACC that plays Indiana<\/a> in the title game Monday. It\u2019s a turn of events that, at least for now, has left in the rearview mirror the playoff rejection of ACC champion Duke.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been about creativity and innovation on the business side of sports, as well as in the area that has connections with competition,\u201d commissioner Jim Phillips<\/a> said in explaining what has worked over the past few tumultuous years.<\/p>\n To reset, Duke won a convoluted tiebreaker to emerge from a five-way tie for second and make the ACC title game, then beat Virginia there<\/a>. But because the Blue Devils had five losses and were unranked, they got passed over by 24th-ranked Sun Belt champion James Madison for the fifth and final automatic-qualifying spot in the 12-team bracket.<\/p>\n It was something of a black eye for a conference that was, for decades, known for basketball, but through expansion moves of its own along with the steady success of either Florida State or Clemson, has cultivated a more-than-respectable resume as a football conference.<\/p>\n In this case, it was Miami \u2014 once a big, brash name in college football<\/a> that hadn\u2019t been quite that since it joined the league in 2004 \u2014 that came to the rescue.<\/p>\n The furor over the Duke snub was erased when the playoff selection committee gave the Hurricanes the last at-large spot over Notre Dame despite ranking them lower than the Fighting Irish all season.<\/p>\n Miami making the final might have validated that decision.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe the ACC is like 9-4 in postseason play this year, and I think a lot of the reasons we have progressed is (thanks to) some of the teams that we have faced throughout the course of the season in our conference,\u201d Miami coach Mario Cristobal said.<\/p>\n Seven of those nine wins have come against other Power Four teams. The ACC also points to solid scheduling \u2014 35 games against Power Four teams overall this season \u2014 and 14 wins against those teams and Notre Dame; both numbers were the highest among the P4 conferences.<\/p>\n Another story line that emerged from Miami\u2019s wins is the $20 million playoff share that will all go to the Hurricanes, instead of being divided among all the conference members, which is the traditional way of doing it.<\/p>\n That arrangement strikes to the heart of the ACC\u2019s dilemma and how it solved it when Florida State and Clemson sued the conference and threatened to leave, concerned about being left behind as the Big Ten and SEC kept expanding.<\/p>\n Phillips and the lawyers came up with a \u201csuccess incentives\u201d initiative<\/a> in which programs would keep all their postseason money. They crafted a similar deal that placed 60% of their media revenue up for grabs, with teams that generate more viewership (think FSU, Clemson, Duke in hoops) getting more of the dough.<\/p>\n \u201cFor us, it was an innovative approach of how to handle our revenue,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cYou put everyone at the same level, then compete for a portion of those resources. We thought about it, talked about it, and said, listen this is the evolution of college sports.\u201d<\/p>\n Also evolving \u2014 the CFP. Under the arrangement in place for the playoff, the Big Ten and SEC have the power to decide what comes next. The ESPN-mandated deadline for that decision is next Friday and the two conferences head into negotiations this weekend with very different views of what should happen.<\/p>\n Phillips and Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark will also be sitting at the negotiating table. Time will tell if sitting there as the commissioner of a league that put a team in this year\u2019s final gives Phillips any more say in these conversations.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a>. Sign up for the AP\u2019s college football newsletter: https:\/\/apnews.com\/cfbtop25<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI (AP) \u2014 The Power 4 conference that didn\u2019t get its champion into the College Football Playoff has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[21823,60839,6786,26771,111,143,2516,1882,28,3731,7603,57,28625,3156,26760,60840,7122,123,125,124,4699,110],"class_list":["post-121653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-atlantic-coast-conference","tag-brett-yormark","tag-clemson-tigers","tag-clemson-tigers-football","tag-college-sports","tag-college-football","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-florida-state-seminoles","tag-florida-state-seminoles-football","tag-football","tag-in-state-wire","tag-indiana","tag-james-madison","tag-jim-phillips","tag-mario-cristobal","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}