{"id":74481,"date":"2025-12-07T14:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T14:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/74481\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T14:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T14:40:07","slug":"college-football-playoff-selection-acc-awaits-decisions-on-miami-duke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/74481\/","title":{"rendered":"College Football Playoff selection: ACC awaits decisions on Miami, Duke"},"content":{"rendered":"

The College Football<\/a> Playoff Selection Committee is on the clock, a strong possibility exists where the ACC is left out of the expanded 12-team bracket. That comes after the league’s doomsday scenario<\/a> unfolded Saturday night in the ACC Championship Game.\u00a0Duke’s overtime win over 17th-ranked Virginia<\/a> eliminated the conference’s shot at being locked into the No. 11 seed given the Cavaliers’ placement ahead of American champion Tulane<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The ACC’s fate falls into the hands of the committee, which must decide between Manny Diaz’s team and Sun Belt champion James Madison<\/a> for the final auto-bid.<\/p>\n

There is No. 12 Miami<\/a>, too. The Hurricanes are widely-accepted as the ACC’s best team, but failed to reach the league’s championship game because of convoluted tiebreakers. Now, Miami has to hope Alabama’s<\/a> loss to Georgia<\/a> was enough to convince the committee that the Hurricanes are worthy of the last at-large bid over the Crimson Tide or Notre Dame<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Duke<\/a> (8-5) now has seven wins over Power opponents this season and the Blue Devils’ five losses \u2014 which includes one to playoff-bound Tulane \u2014 came against teams with a combined record of 46-14. Those are the positives for Duke’s case.<\/p>\n

From the JMU (12-1) side, the Sun Belt champions’ lone loss came at Louisville<\/a>, but their strength of schedule is easily the worst among teams in the playoff discussion.<\/p>\n

“They don’t have wins like this,”\u00a0Diaz said<\/a>. “They don’t have a win against a team like that. That’s a big-time team right there in Virginia<\/a>. Seven wins in this conference, seven Power Four wins compared to zero. That’s a playoff team. Darian Mensah<\/a> may be the best damn quarterback in the country. These guys deserve to be in.”<\/p>\n

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips emphatically pushed for his league to get multiple\u00a0playoff bids earlier this week. According to CBS Sports’ final playoff projection<\/a>, the league could come up empty.<\/p>\n

“I have conviction and confidence in our teams, starting with Miami,” Phillips told the Associated Press<\/a>. “The second piece of that is the Virginia-Duke winner should absolutely be in this College Football Playoff.”<\/p>\n

“Absolutely” is a strong word choice from Phillips, who would’ve been right had the Cavaliers handled their business like they did against this same five-loss Duke team a couple of weeks ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It didn’t happen, however.<\/p>\n

The ACC’s best playoff shot is Miami, whose metrics are at least comparable to Notre Dame and Alabama. And the big separator looks to be the head-to-head win over the Fighting Irish, though the selection committee hasn’t seemed to acknowledge that data point yet.<\/p>\n

“I remain steadfast in my conviction, which has only grown stronger over the season \u2014 especially these last four weeks,” Phillips said. “The eye test, the stats, the results \u2014 they’ve earned a spot in the playoff.”<\/p>\n

Miami (10-2) won its final four games convincingly<\/a>, including several victories over common opponents shared with Notre Dame.<\/p>\n

“We know the final rankings aren’t until Sunday, so there’s time for course correction by the committee,” Phillips said. “The committee’s made it clear that idle teams can move up in the final rankings. And we’re going to continue our efforts, as there’s no question Miami’s a playoff team and they’ve earned a spot in the playoff.”<\/p>\n

While both Miami and Notre Dame were both idle on Saturday, fluctuation could occur. A loss for BYU<\/a> against Texas Tech<\/a> should place Miami right behind Notre Dame for the first time during this playoff discussion and might be the final data point needed for the boost into the final bracket.<\/p>\n

“The management committee during the offseason provided some clarification to some comments that were made last year, and indeed idle teams can move following the results of the championship games,” committee chair Hunter Yurachek said during the penultimate rankings reveal. “And how they impact the teams that are around those that play in the championship game and data such as strength of schedule, teams that may be idle. So yes, teams that are idle can move up or down.”<\/p>\n

One thing’s for certain \u2014 there’s going to a mutiny within the ACC if its best team and league champion are both left out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The College Football Playoff Selection Committee is on the clock, a strong possibility exists where the ACC is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[42356,35512,19227,38550,11314,42355,42354,24054,143,2516,38629,27515,42357,123,4641,7209,125,5079,124],"class_list":["post-74481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-acc-championship","tag-cfb","tag-cfp","tag-cfp-bracket","tag-cfp-rankings","tag-cfp-seeds","tag-cfp-selection","tag-college-football-playoff-bracket","tag-college-football","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-duke-football","tag-manny-diaz","tag-mario-cirstobal","tag-miami","tag-miami-fla-hurricanes","tag-miami-football","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-hurricanes","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74481","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=74481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}