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Friedlander: The ACC is already a Playoff winner, no matter what happens from here on out
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The biggest upset of the 2024 college football season happened Sunday.
And no games were even played.
Forget the hypotheticals. Throw away the metrics. Tune out all the noise coming from ESPN’s irate talking heads.
SMU just beat Alabama.
The Mustangs lost to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game late Saturday night. But they beat the odds – and the Crimson Tide – 12 hours later when they were selected as the final at-large team into the College Football Playoff.
Rhett Lashlee’s 11-2 team will take on Penn State in an opening-round game in Happy Valley on Saturday, Dec. 21. That same day, Dabo Swinney’s newly crowned conference champion Tigers, the No. 12 seed, will travel to Texas to take on the No. 5-seeded Longhorns.
While Clemson’s walk-off 34-31 win in Charlotte on Saturday cost the ACC a bye into the quarterfinals and an opening-round home game, it opened the door for the conference to earn multiple bids in the expanded 12-team field.
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That shouldn’t come as a surprise considering SMU was already in a Playoff position ranked ahead of idle Alabama heading into the weekend. And because Selection Committee Chairman Warde Manuel assured that teams wouldn’t be penalized for losing in their championship games.
But given the committee’s history, its affinity for the SEC in general and Alabama specifically, it’s understandable why folks in Dallas, at the ACC office and all around the league’s bi-coastal footprint were “on pins and needles” – as Lashlee put it – awaiting Sunday’s bracket announcement.
The SMU coach was so concerned that his team might be left out of the field that he chose not to hold a watch party just in case.
Hoping for the best. Preparing for the worst while trying to shield his players from the public heartbreak Florida State’s team was forced to deal with on social media after their snub a year ago.
SMU getting into this Playoff at the expense of Alabama doesn’t make up for that egregious decision to bump the undefeated ACC champion Seminoles in favor of the Crimson Tide. And maybe it wouldn’t have happened had Nick Saban still been coaching in Tuscaloosa rather than sitting behind an analyst’s desk at ESPN’s studios in Bristol, Conn.
But it sure does provide a heavy dose of poetic justice.
Did the committee get it right?
Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on your perspective.
Did the committee do the right thing?
Absolutely.
Although it can be argued that SMU’s schedule wasn’t as tough as Alabama’s, a subjective claim furthered by those previously mentioned talking heads, it was not only good enough to qualify for its conference championship game – which the Crimson Tide didn’t – but also to be slotted higher by the committee in last week’s rankings.
Nothing that happened Saturday changed that.
“In the balance of it, in the way SMU played in that game losing on a last-second field goal, we just felt that in this particular case, SMU still had the nod at 10 above Alabama,” Manuel said on ESPN’s selection show. “It’s no disrespect to Alabama’s strength of schedule. It’s merely looking at the entirety of the body of work for both teams.”
In the end, the decision between the 2 bubble teams likely came down to the fact that SMU’s 2 losses, to BYU and Clemson, were better than Alabama’s 3 setbacks. Particularly that unsightly 3-touchdown blowout at Oklahoma 3 weeks ago.
The Mustangs also helped their case greatly by bouncing back from some early mistakes and 17-point deficit to tie the ACC title game with 16 seconds remaining. Even though they eventually lost on a dramatic 56-yard field goal by Clemson’s Nolan Hauser as time expired, they still ended up winning in the eyes of the committee.
“As we watched the whole game, we were impressed that SMU came back the way they did,” Manuel said.
All things considered, the Mustangs emerged from the uncertainty of the selection process as well as Lashlee or anyone associated with the ACC could have imagined.
Although they’ll be on the road and will have to brave some wintery Western Pennsylvania weather, they’re matched against a team with a history of coming up small in big games. Hence Penn State coach James Franklin’s oft-mocked moniker: “Little Game James.” Then if they survive and advance, they’ll be matched against Mountain West champion Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl rather than top-2 seeds Oregon and Georgia.
But at this point it doesn’t matter who SMU plays from here on out. They’ve beat the bully on Sunday. Now they can finally turn their attention to the matchups that really matter.
The kind that are decided on the field. Not by a committee.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
