MIAMI – The Power 4 conference that didn’t get its champion into the College Football Playoff has a team that tied for second playing in the CFP’s national title game.
So much for the demise of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The league that looked most vulnerable a few short years ago when the latest round of realignment shook up college sports is doing just fine.
The best proof comes out of Miami, a second-place finisher in the ACC that plays Indiana in the title game Monday. It’s a turn of events that, at least for now, has left in the rearview mirror the playoff rejection of ACC champion Duke.
“It’s been about creativity and innovation on the business side of sports, as well as in the area that has connections with competition,” commissioner Jim Phillips said in explaining what has worked over the past few tumultuous years.
To reset, Duke won a convoluted tiebreaker to emerge from a five-way tie for second and make the ACC title game, then beat Virginia there. But because the Blue Devils had five losses and were unranked, they got passed over by 24th-ranked Sun Belt champion James Madison for the fifth and final automatic-qualifying spot in the 12-team bracket.
It was something of a black eye for a conference that was, for decades, known for basketball, but through expansion moves of its own along with the steady success of either Florida State or Clemson, has cultivated a more-than-respectable resume as a football conference.
In this case, it was Miami — once a big, brash name in college football that hadn’t been quite that since it joined the league in 2004 — that came to the rescue.
The furor over the Duke snub was erased when the playoff selection committee gave the Hurricanes the last at-large spot over Notre Dame despite ranking them lower than the Fighting Irish all season.
Miami making the final might have validated that decision.
“I believe the ACC is like 9-4 in postseason play this year, and I think a lot of the reasons we have progressed is (thanks to) some of the teams that we have faced throughout the course of the season in our conference,” Miami coach Mario Cristobal said.
Seven of those nine wins have come against other Power Four teams. The ACC also points to solid scheduling — 35 games against Power Four teams overall this season — and 14 wins against those teams and Notre Dame; both numbers were the highest among the P4 conferences.
Another story line that emerged from Miami’s wins is the $20 million playoff share that will all go to the Hurricanes, instead of being divided among all the conference members, which is the traditional way of doing it.
That arrangement strikes to the heart of the ACC’s dilemma and how it solved it when Florida State and Clemson sued the conference and threatened to leave, concerned about being left behind as the Big Ten and SEC kept expanding.
Phillips and the lawyers came up with a “success incentives” initiative in which programs would keep all their postseason money. They crafted a similar deal that placed 60% of their media revenue up for grabs, with teams that generate more viewership (think FSU, Clemson, Duke in hoops) getting more of the dough.
“For us, it was an innovative approach of how to handle our revenue,” Phillips said. “You put everyone at the same level, then compete for a portion of those resources. We thought about it, talked about it, and said, listen this is the evolution of college sports.”
Also evolving — the CFP. Under the arrangement in place for the playoff, the Big Ten and SEC have the power to decide what comes next. The ESPN-mandated deadline for that decision is next Friday and the two conferences head into negotiations this weekend with very different views of what should happen.
Phillips and Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark will also be sitting at the negotiating table. Time will tell if sitting there as the commissioner of a league that put a team in this year’s final gives Phillips any more say in these conversations.
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