The Clemson Tigers gained the ACC championship on Friday evening in thrilling trend, beating SMU, 34-31, on a walk-off 56-yard discipline purpose.
That win not solely places Clemson within the Faculty Soccer Playoff, however it additionally creates some potential havoc down the bracket and will have large implications for the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Alabama was within the 12-team discipline after the latest rankings on Tuesday evening, however there was nothing comfy about its placement. Because the Crimson Tide weren’t taking part in in a convention championship sport of their very own, their best path to safe a playoff spot was going to be for SMU to defeat Clemson within the ACC sport.
Or, maybe, hope that Clemson beat SMU so soundly and so emphatically that it’d trigger the committee to drop it under Alabama within the ultimate rating.
Neither occurred.
Not solely did a three-loss Clemson crew win the ACC to leapfrog Alabama within the discipline, however SMU performed so properly and made the sport so shut that it will be virtually inconceivable for the committee to disregard it.
Alabama’s argument goes to be the identical as it’s for each borderline SEC crew.
“We play within the SEC, and the SEC is the perfect convention, and which means one thing.”
Or one thing alongside these strains.
Whereas that is likely to be true, taking a three-loss Alabama crew that didn’t even attain its personal convention title sport over a two-loss SMU crew that was a discipline purpose away from beating Clemson can be fairly a leap for the committee, particularly when two of these three losses for Alabama got here in opposition to a 6-6 Vanderbilt crew and a 6-6 Oklahoma crew.
Clemson did what it wanted to do on Saturday by successful its convention title sport.
SMU ought to have finished sufficient by making it a sport and taking it to the wire, going into the postseason with simply two losses.
Alabama had an opportunity to do what it wanted to do in opposition to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. It failed. It has no one guilty however itself if it misses the 12-team discipline on Sunday.
