Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips is pushing for No. 12 Miami to earn a bid to the College Football Playoff along with the winner of the league championship game between No. 16 Virginia and Duke.
That comes with the ACC facing at least the chance of being squeezed out of the 12-team CFP entirely based on Tuesday night’s rankings.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Phillips was emphatic in making his case for the Hurricanes and then the league’s eventual champion. That comes after the ACC had a logjam of four 6-2 teams behind the Cavaliers, triggering a tiebreaker policy that worked through multiple steps before sending the five-loss Blue Devils ahead of the Hurricanes and others for Saturday night’s title game in Charlotte.
“I have conviction and confidence in our teams, starting with Miami,” Phillips told the AP. “The second piece of that is the Virginia-Duke winner should absolutely be in this College Football Playoff.”
The Hurricanes (10-2) have closed strong as the league’s highest-ranked team in the AP Top 25 and CFP rankings, while the Cavaliers (10-2) finished as the lone 7-1 ACC team.
Duke’s inclusion, triggered by then-ranked SMU losing at California last weekend, represents a potential chaos agent.
Automatic CFP bids go to the five highest-ranked league champions. That theoretically accounts first for the “Power Four” champions from the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC. Then would come the highest-ranked champ from a Group of Five league: the American, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences.
In Tuesday’s CFP rankings, Miami is a bubble team for an at-large bid at No. 12 while the Cavaliers are 17th for a simple win-and-in scenario in Charlotte.
But Duke (7-5) is unranked. Meanwhile, the American has both of its title-game teams (North Texas and Tulane) in the CFP rankings, putting that winner in line for a win-and-in ticket.
And then there’s James Madison (11-1), which entered the CFP rankings at No. 25 before Friday’s Sun Belt title game against Troy. That, along with a Duke win against Virginia, could potentially give the Sun Belt the fifth champion’s spot and leave the ACC’s CFP hopes resting with the on-the-bubble Hurricanes.
Phillips, who has previously been optimistic about landing multiple bids, knows the scenarios. He’s undeterred that the ACC deserves two bids all the same.
“I’m not naive,” he said, “but I have conviction about it.”
Miami’s position stands out with the Hurricanes having a head-to-head win with Notre Dame, which sits two spots ahead in the CFP rankings despite that 27-24 season-opening loss.
That result would seemingly be a differentiator considering the teams have matching 10-2 records and comparable ESPN strength-of-schedule rankings (Notre Dame 42nd, Miami 44th). The Hurricanes have more wins against top-40 teams in ESPN’s College Football Power Index (five) than the Fighting Irish (two) and a better record against AP-ranked teams at the time of the matchup (Miami at 4-0, Notre Dame at 2-2).
Additionally, the teams had matching games against two bowl-eligible teams - home against N.C. State, at then-ranked Pittsburgh - among their four common opponents. The Hurricanes beat the Wolfpack and Panthers by a combined 65 points, more than the Irish’s 51 points in those games.
“I remain steadfast in my conviction, which has only grown stronger over the season - especially these last four weeks,” Phillips said. “The eye test, the stats, the results - they’ve earned a spot in the playoff.”
Those comparisons have also been a topic for Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich in social-media posts this week, with one noting: “Head-to-head not ‘a’ data point but ‘the’ data point!”
Phillips said the ACC has been in constant contact with the committee “and that’s going to continue up to the selections.”
“We know the final rankings aren’t until Sunday, so there’s time for course correction by the committee,” Phillips said.
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