The college football regular season has come to a close.
The results of Rivalry Week certainly have not made things any easier on the College Football Playoff committee. Let’s discuss the possibilities in the Week 14 takeaways.
The ACC conference championship picture was resoundingly clear heading into Saturday. If Virginia beat Virginia Tech, the Cavaliers would punch their ticket to Charlotte.
Check.
If SMU beat Cal, the Mustangs would also punch their ticket to Charlotte.
Cal 38 SMU 35.
That, of course, means that 7-5 Duke has improbably made the conference title by virtue of beating Wake Forest on Saturday and winning a five-way tie for second-place in the ACC at 6-2 in league play.
So now it’ll be Duke and Virginia for the ACC title. The Blue Devils haven’t played for a conference championship since 2014, while the Cavaliers will be making their first appearance since 2019.
Under no circumstances should 8-5 ACC title-winning Duke be one of the five highest-ranked conference champions that would be eligible for a bid into the College Football Playoff. If Duke upsets Virginia, there should instead be two representatives from the Group of Five that should receive automatic bids.
The champions in the SEC (Alabama or Georgia), Big Ten (Ohio State or Indiana), Big 12 (Texas Tech or BYU) and American (Tulane or North Texas) should all be in the playoff if Duke beats Virginia. The final automatic bid would then come down to Duke or James Madison, assuming the Dukes are able to win the Sun Belt title against Troy. JMU would be 12-1 in that scenario, with their only loss coming on the road to Louisville.
It’s certainly plausible that James Madison’s résumé is better than Duke’s, and is deserving of a playoff spot.
Of course, if Virginia beats Duke, the Cavaliers will be in the College Football Playoff. If Troy upsets James Madison in the Sun Belt conference title game and Duke beats Virginia, it’ll likely be Duke getting the nod in a shocking turn of events.
Texas played host to No. 3 Texas A&M on Friday night and finally got the version of Arch Manning that they had been clamoring for.
Manning was outstanding in the biggest moments. While A&M’s defense made things difficult in the first half, Manning shined in the second half. He finished with 179 yards passing and a touchdown to go along with a game-sealing 35-yard touchdown scamper with seven minutes to play that helped the Longhorns pull away for a 10-point win.
Much was made after the game about head coach Steve Sarkisian’s politicking for his team’s playoff case, but Manning’s play earned Texas its biggest win of the season, and a fighting chance to play meaningful football in January as a three-loss SEC team.
Miami left no doubt in its regular season finale on Saturday, throttling Pittsburgh 38-7 at Acrisure Stadium to finish the season 10-2.
However, 10-2 Miami, even while looking like the best team in a confounding ACC, won’t be playing in Charlotte for a conference title. Instead, the Hurricanes lost a tiebreak to Duke, who will go to the conference title game instead.
So the Hurricanes will now need to rely on the committee to vault them into an at-large bid over other 10-2 teams (or even a 9-3 team like Texas). But even with Miami beating a 10-2 Notre Dame team (that they’ll be compared against) in the season-opener, the Irish have appeared to be the more consistent team all year long. The committee has agreed (at least to this point), ranking the Irish ahead of the Hurricanes in every poll so far.
Will Saturday’s results change anything, specifically in regard to Notre Dame and Miami? Anything is possible, but it seems unlikely with how the two programs have been evaluated by the committee to-date. And that’s bad news for Miami fans despite a strong finish to the regular season.
Ohio State obliterated Michigan on Saturday at The Big House by a final score of 27-9 to exorcise Ryan Day’s demons and put an exclamation point on a perfect 12-0 regular season for the Buckeyes. The victory snapped a four-game losing streak for Ohio State against Michigan.
Despite winning the national championship a year ago, Ohio State will play in its first Big Ten championship game since 2020 next Saturday against No. 2 Indiana.
“There’s no question that the fans and all of our supporters, what this means,” Day said on Saturday. “That’s what hurt the last couple years, more than anything…you just feel like you’re letting everybody down. That’s just not a good feeling.”
Day didn’t have to worry about that on Saturday. Ohio State outgained Michigan 419 to 163 and was dominant at the line of scrimmage in the victory.
The Buckeyes look like the class of college football as they look to defend their national title.
