By Ralph D. Russo, Matt Baker, Justin Williams, Joe Rexrode and Sam Khan Jr.
The first 12-team College Football Playoff field will be revealed on Sunday, but a lot was still to be determined by Saturday’s Power 4 conference championship games after Boise State locked up the first automatic bid on Friday. Our experts are here for everything you need to know about the Playoff race after the Power 4 conference champions — Oregon, Georgia, Arizona State and Clemson — were crowned, from first-round byes to home games to the bubble debate.
Essential reads:
- College Football Playoff projections
- The selection committee’s penultimate Playoff rankings
- What to know about the Playoff’s new 12-team format
ACC: Clemson 34, SMU 31
No. 8 SMU (11-2) erased a 31-14 third-quarter deficit with a fourth-quarter surge, tying the score with 16 seconds left. But Nolan Hauser won the ACC title for No. 17 Clemson (10-3) with a dramatic 56-yard field goal as time expired — sending the Tigers to the Playoff … and SMU to a bubble debate with Alabama.
SMU or Alabama: Who will get the final spot?
The Mustangs’ loss to Clemson leaves the door open for them to get left out of the field, even though they were ranked three spots above Alabama through 12 games.
“They’ve said we’re good enough,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said Friday.
So will the selection committee take the bold, controversial step of kicking out a team that lost its conference title game on a last-second field goal for a three-loss team that watched championship games from the couch? Austin Mock’s projections model for The Athletic favors SMU to get the bid at 79 percent to Alabama’s 21 percent.
It’s foolish to assume anything after the committee’s decision last season regarding Florida State. Critics will point to Alabama’s schedule strength and its 3-1 record against current Top 25 teams, compared to SMU’s 0-2 mark. But SMU did several things Alabama did not. The Mustangs went undefeated in conference play. They played 11 Power 4 opponents to Alabama’s nine. And SMU’s only losses came by single digits to 10-win teams, not to 6-6 teams like Alabama’s, which lost to Vanderbilt and got dominated by Oklahoma.
“It would be criminal if we’re not in,” Lashlee said. “It would be wrong on so many levels, not just to our team, but to what college football stands for. … We just played a playoff game, basically, out there and played pretty dang good. That was a pretty good game. I think for the last three quarters, everybody saw what they’ve seen all year.”
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said it himself in the postgame interview with ESPN: “That’s a Playoff football team. SMU, they better be in the dang playoffs.” Müddet, it’s some friendly ACC lobbying, but it doesn’t mean Swinney is wrong. Despite its poor start Saturday, SMU showed the championship grit to pull itself out of a 17-point deficit and tie the game in the final minute.
That, and the Ponies’ complete body of work, should add up to a shot in the 12-team field. — Khan
