{"id":91730,"date":"2025-12-21T20:11:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T20:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/91730\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T20:11:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T20:11:33","slug":"paul-finebaum-miami-win-over-texas-am-is-a-major-win-for-acc-shot-to-sec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/91730\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Finebaum: Miami win over Texas A&M is a major win for ACC, shot to SEC"},"content":{"rendered":"

The opening round of the College Football Playoff<\/a> is in the books. Perhaps the highlight of Saturday\u2019s games ended up being the defensive battle between Miami<\/a> and Texas A&M<\/a>, which ended in a Hurricanes win thanks to a last-minute interception. With that, Miami was able to strike a blow for the ACC against the SEC.<\/p>\n

Paul Finebaum shared some thoughts on the Miami win following the game on The Matt Barrie Show. There, the Hurricanes found success they haven\u2019t had as a program in the Playoff era. <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, there\u2019s no comparison in terms of the first round games,\u201d Paul Finebaum said<\/a>. \u201cWhere would it have been most difficult to win? I\u2019m really happy for Mario Cristobal<\/a>. He\u2019s taken some shots and made some terrible decisions. The end of the Georgia Tech<\/a> game a couple of years ago. So many inexplicable moments like Syracuse<\/a> last year, but he finally has that program where it should be and, quite frankly, it\u2019s great to see. Everybody needs to learn how to do The U when they\u2019re picking Miami, but in the future, they\u2019ll learn.\u201d <\/p>\n

This is the first-ever run for Miami in the College Football Playoff. For a program that expects to compete for national championships, it\u2019s now been more than two decades since Miami won one. So, in many respects, Miami has returned to form under Cristobal.<\/p>\n

Paul Finebaum thinks it\u2019s more than a great win for Miami. It\u2019s also a win for the ACC, which has been fighting for its reputation when compared to the SEC.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, that was a monster win for the ACC as well. That league has taken so many shots, most of them self-inflicted. If I can say so down here in Sweet Home Alabama,\u201d Finebaum said. \u201cIt was a major shot to the SEC as well. Because the SEC was going to lose somebody in the Alabama<\/a>\u2013Oklahoma<\/a> game, but that was the game they had to win. It\u2019s going to hurt all around. You hate to just say, \u2018Okay, A&M losing its last two games,\u2019 but what can you do? I mean, that season, it\u2019s just not going to be remembered very well because of the way it ended.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are now just three SEC schools left in the College Football Playoff bracket. That\u2019s worth noting for Finebaum. After all, Ole Miss<\/a> and Georgia<\/a> will play each other in the quarterfinal round. So, at the most, the SEC will have two schools in the semifinals. That depends on how Alabama handles top-seeded Indiana in the Rose Bowl. After two-straight seasons of the Big Ten winning national championships, it\u2019s setting up a conference besides the SEC to win it all again.<\/p>\n

How the SEC shakes out moving forward, this Playoff remains to be seen. It\u2019s clear, however, that Finebaum took note of Texas A&M falling the way they did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The opening round of the College Football Playoff is in the books. Perhaps the highlight of Saturday\u2019s games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,10866],"class_list":{"0":"post-91730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-miami","9":"tag-miami-headlines","10":"tag-miami-news","11":"tag-paul-finebaum"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91730","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=91730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}