SMU Needs To Win the ACC Championship, Or Else
I’m on the record stating I don’t really think Alabama belongs in the College Football Playoff – the loss to Oklahoma so late in the season like that was was too egregious for a three-loss team.
I’m also on the record stating I can’t find a 12th team other than Bama with a legitimate beef to get in, and won’t exactly be heartbroken if SMU is that team if it loses to Clemson.
At the moment, though, a large portion of the college football social media and talking head circuit appears to be missing something relatively obvious.
It would take a massive lift for the College Football Playoff committee to put in SMU if it loses the ACC Championship.
The argument is easy to understand: Alabama has three losses, SMU is 11-1 going into the ACC Championship, and the CFP gave the impression that teams in conference championships would not be hurt in the rankings for playing that extra game, which was a terrible way to communicate.
That is not good in one big way. It does not help if SMU loses.
At the moment, Clemson is ranked 17th in the CFP. It lost to South Carolina (14) and Georgia (5). The only other team outside the top 12 that can play its way in is UNLV (20), which won its conference championship and is one of the five teams that automatically gets in.
SMU comes in eighth. If it beats Clemson, it is in as the third seed. Boise State or the Big 12 champion is in as the fourth seed, and either UNLV or the Big 12 champion is in as the 12th.
Auburn is 11th, and people from Ole Miss, Miami, and South Carolina will be honking. But someone has to get in, and everyone else has to be left out. It is not too complicated.
That being said, SMU is in big trouble if it loses to Clemson.
If Clemson beats SMU in a head-to-head match, it will almost certainly move ahead of SMU in the rankings. However, with losses to Louisville, Georgia, and South Carolina, it will not go too far up the charts, so SMU will have to go down.
The CFP said there were no more pieces of information to be had. That is the important one.
The real trouble starts after that. Georgia beat Alabama, but Georgia beat Clemson in the first game of the season. It also beat South Carolina, who beat Clemson last week.
Even though the CFP would say that winning an ACC Championship and going 10-3 is better than 9-3, it is still hard to believe when you look at Clemson’s big picture.
Now, what if the committee goes against what they said and puts SMU in if they lose the ACC Championship? Yes, and it would really help to silence the, let us be polite, stupid people who think the SEC is somehow behind this whole thing.
Do not count on it, though.
This is how people will feel about it afterward. For SMU, go win the ACC title. Now is your chance to decide your own fate. If you lose, you messed up.
