The Miami Hurricanes have one week left to prove they deserve a spot in the College Football Playoff, and hope is still alive.<\/p>\n
Miami is No. 12 in this week\u2019s College Football Playoff rankings released Tuesday night, which likely puts them on the outside of the playoff field. But UM could still make its way in.<\/p>\n
\u201cMiami, again is a team that \u2026 really appears that they\u2019re starting to look like the Miami team that started 5-0,\u201d selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek said. \u201cAnd what they\u2019ve been able to do over the last three weeks and winning those three games and looking really good on the offensive side of the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes are currently in the projected bracket, but that is because they are the top-ranked ACC team. The winner of the ACC title game will likely take that spot, and UM is unlikely to play for the conference title.<\/p>\n
Miami trails several fellow two-loss teams, including No. 9 Notre Dame, No. 8 Oklahoma and No. 10 Alabama. The Fighting Irish obliterated Syracuse last week. Oklahoma beat previously ranked Missouri in a low-scoring game. Alabama rolled to a win over an FCS team.<\/p>\n
Miami moved one spot ahead of Utah after the Utes escaped what would have been a fatal home loss against Kansas State, winning in the game\u2019s final minute.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes are also threatened from behind by No. 14 Vanderbilt, which faces No. 19 Tennessee in the final week of the season. No. 16 Texas could make a case for a playoff spot despite having three losses if it beats No. 3 Texas A&M this week.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes have been at the center of a national debate about their placement in the College Football Playoff rankings compared to Notre Dame. Miami has consistently ranked several spots behind the Fighting Irish since the committee started ranking the teams at the start of November even though UM and Notre Dame have the same record and Miami won the head-to-head matchup in Week 1.<\/p>\n
The selection committee chairs, Mack Rhoades and now Yurachek, have said this season that the difference between the teams is that the Hurricanes lost to then-unranked Louisville and SMU, but the Fighting Irish lost to UM and No. 3 Texas A&M. SMU is now ranked in the top 25 and could reach the playoffs for the second consecutive year if it makes the ACC title game and wins.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Miami\u2019s loss to SMU) definitively is viewed differently than it was versus an unranked SMU team,\u201d Yurachek said.<\/p>\n
Yurachek did praise the Hurricanes\u2019 recent performance, singling out quarterback Carson Beck for praise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019ve talked about as a committee in the middle of the season, Miami lacked some consistency, especially on the offensive side of the ball,\u201d Yurachek said. \u201cIt appears in the last three weeks they have fixed that, especially Carson Beck is back to the Carson Beck, I think, that really played those first five games. \u2026 So Miami again is a team very much on the rise. They\u2019ve moved six spots since the initial poll has come out and they\u2019re really the highest climber in our top 25 during that time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now Notre Dame appears to be a near-lock for the playoff, while Miami is battling for one of the last at-large berths (barring an unlikely appearance in the ACC title game).<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s one scenario that matters \u2014 just one \u2014 and that\u2019s us finding a way to be 1-0,\u201d Miami coach Mario Cristobal said Monday. \u201cThat\u2019s it. Again, (I am) a 100 percent believer, as football has always been, in the field test. That\u2019s always the most important test. And we get one weekly, unless you have a bye week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck, who played for three College Football Playoff qualifiers (and two national champions) at Georgia, said he believes the Hurricanes have bounced back well from the losses they suffered earlier in the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what I\u2019ve said since the beginning of the season is the true testament of a team is how they respond when they face adversity, and we faced adversity this year,\u201d Beck said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe maybe slipped up a little bit and maybe didn\u2019t play our best, and we fell short a couple of times, and adversity was right in our face. I don\u2019t know, you can go look at the games. We\u2019ve responded in what I believe to be an amazing way. Guys are in here. The energy is high at practice. The energy is high in workouts and film. Guys are showing up earlier, staying later. Just the time commitment that you see from this team and the care factor from everybody is at an all-time high after facing that adversity.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain, like I said, the true testament of a team is when they face adversity. And I feel like we\u2019ve really been able to show who we are, and I feel like that holds a lot of weight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here is this week\u2019s College Football Playoff rankings:<\/p>\n
1. Ohio State<\/p>\n
2. Indiana<\/p>\n
3. Texas A&M<\/p>\n
4. Georgia<\/p>\n
5. Texas Tech<\/p>\n
6. Oregon<\/p>\n
7. Ole Miss<\/p>\n
8. Oklahoma<\/p>\n
9. Notre Dame<\/p>\n
10. Alabama<\/p>\n
11. BYU<\/p>\n
12. Miami<\/p>\n
13. Utah<\/p>\n
14. Vanderbilt<\/p>\n
15. Michigan<\/p>\n
16. Texas<\/p>\n
17. USC<\/p>\n
18. Virginia<\/p>\n
19. Tennessee<\/p>\n
20. Arizona State<\/p>\n
21. SMU<\/p>\n
22. Pittsburgh<\/p>\n
23. Georgia Tech<\/p>\n
24. Tulane<\/p>\n
25. Arizona<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami Hurricanes have one week left to prove they deserve a spot in the College Football Playoff,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[21702,123,125,5079,124],"class_list":["post-61210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-college-football-playoff-rankings","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-hurricanes","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61210","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=61210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}