The ACC branding issues struck again. And the SEC again got the benefit of the doubt.
Same as it ever was, right?
That was the sentiment emanating from ACC Country Tuesday after the College Football Playoff’s penultimate rankings propelled a three-loss Alabama team over a two-loss Miami. If SMU defeats Clemson in Saturday’s ACC Championship, the ACC will have only one team in the 12-team playoff field while the SEC will get four.
For a conference that looked like it could get three teams in only a week ago, it’s a devastating blow. ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said the conference was “shocked and disappointed” Miami fell six spots to No. 12. For the second consecutive year, it looks like an ACC team will miss the cut in favor of an Alabama team that has an additional loss. Last year, a 13-0 Florida State team was left out for a 12-1 SEC champion Alabama team after Jordan Travis’ injury.
Miami slipping behind Alabama this year is a particularly difficult pill to swallow given the Hurricanes’ easy schedule and star quarterback Cam Ward. All Miami had to do was beat Syracuse to make the field, regardless of what it did against SMU in the ACC Championship.
The ACC, which has been searching for solutions to fix its perceived brand issues, badly needed the Hurricanes to do so. For a conference that has largely been propped up by Dabo Swinney’s Clemson run in the 2010s, “The U” making the playoff would have been an exposure bonanza for the ACC. It would prove that the steps the conference has taken to promote its brand were working.
Instead, Miami is out after it blew a 21-0 lead in its 42-38 loss to the Orange. Alabama is the biggest beneficiary of Miami’s late collapse.
Is Alabama a particularly good team? No, though it’s hard to identify any great teams with NIL bringing more and more parity to college football. Alabama briefly looked like perhaps the nation’s best squad in a thrilling home win over Georgia. It had impressive wins over No. 19 Missouri and LSU. It didn’t look anything close to a playoff team, though, in a 24-3 road loss to Oklahoma two weeks ago that felt like it should have killed the Tide’s playoff chances. The loss to 6-6 Vanderbilt was a shock to the system and enough to knock a contender out in the previous four-team format, too.
But the committee liked Alabama’s marquee wins over Miami’s unimpressive resume. Warde Manuel, the selection committee chair, highlighted the Tide’s 3-1 record against top 25 teams while Miami was 0-1. Syracuse moved into the top 25 at No. 22 after its win Saturday over the Hurricanes. Alabama had a better strength of resume (10) than Miami (14), too, despite its additional loss.
Does a 9-3 Alabama team with losses to Oklahoma and Vanderbilt deserve to be in the playoff? Not really.
But the more important question is whether it deserves to be in over Miami.
Clearly, the selection committee thinks so.
To their point, the Tide’s wins over Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri are better than anything Miami has accomplished this season. The ACC rebuttal is you can only play the teams you have on your schedule, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that tough schedules should be rewarded. The team with the better wins got the edge over Miami’s argument that its two losses — both on the road and by a combined nine points — warranted its inclusion over Alabama’s three losses, the most recent of which by 21 points. Without a top 25 win, two losses proved to be too much for the committee to put Miami into the field.
The issue is that the selection committee yet again wasn’t consistent in its approach. If Alabama got the benefit of the doubt over Miami so too should have No. 13 Ole Miss and No. 14 South Carolina, the SEC’s other three-loss teams, in that line of thinking. Ole Miss (No. 5 Georgia) and South Carolina (No. 17 Clemson) both have better wins than anything Miami has accomplished. Buoyed by rising star quarterback LaNorris Sellers, South Carolina is the hottest team in the SEC right now but out of the playoff mix.
Here’s how Manuel explained those rankings:
In Miami up until the last three weeks they’ve had a very good season. They’ve lost two in the last three weeks. Mississippi, for example, has a win against Georgia, as you know, a win against South Carolina. But they have a loss against Kentucky, the loss in overtime against LSU. At sometimes their offense is putting up a lot of points, defense leads the country in a lot of sacks. Miami, top offense in the country with 44 points and over 500 yards per game. So it’s really close. It’s not just one datapoint over the other. We just try to take a look — not try; we do take a look at their body of work to evaluate them and make decisions.
Obviously Mississippi is going to be ahead of South Carolina with the head to head, same record. As we evaluated them, that’s how the vote came out in terms of Miami, Mississippi and then South Carolina.
Even more concerning for the ACC was Manuel’s answer on whether a 11-1 SMU team, currently ranked No. 9, could drop below Alabama with a loss to Clemson in the ACC title game.
“Potentially yes,” Manuel said.
If that occurred — and it would make sense if you follow the committee’s rankings given SMU would have a similar resume to 10-2 Miami — it would also seriously call into question the value in playing conference championship games if the loser could get knocked out of the field. It would be particularly painful for the ACC, too, if No. 5 Georgia could lose the SEC Championship, have three losses and still get in while a two-loss SMU team was out. Penalizing a team like SMU in favor of a three-loss Alabama team could kill conference championship games long-term if that logic was applied everywhere.
But the lesson the committee reminded everyone Tuesday night is the benefit of the doubt will always go to Alabama over the ACC. If SMU loses Saturday, it may learn that the hard way just like new conference peer Miami did.
