ACC commissioner Jim Phillips believes SMU should be in the College Football Playoff field no matter what happens in Saturday’s conference championship game against Clemson. He also said Monday that Miami (Fla.) should be in the field as an at-large team.
Ahead of Tuesday’s CFP rankings reveal and Saturday’s Power 4 conference title games, the selection committee has more on its plate than ever before. Depending on the movement this week’s rankings, 11-1 SMU may be the only Power 4 team playing next Saturday that could enter the weekend in the projected field but exit Saturday on the wrong side of the bubble if it loses.
The commissioner disagrees.
“SMU is in the tournament,” Phillips told The Athletic. “I don’t see any way you can’t keep SMU in regardless of what happens on Saturday. Playing in a conference championship game, there cannot be a negative residual to that if you are in the field going into that weekend. If you are in the top 12, there should be no downside.”
(According to the latest projections from The Athletic’s Austin Mock, SMU currently has an 89 percent chance of making the Playoff.)
That point is the big question for coaches, players and commissioners heading into the weekend. SMU and Oregon are the only Power 4 teams that went undefeated in conference play. The SEC and Big Ten both will hold conference championship games involving two surefire Playoff teams, but the Big 12, ACC and Mountain West appear to have only their champions guaranteed a spot. What will the committee do?
Would it be wrong for team in the currently projected field to lose in the conference championship and get jumped by a team that stayed home and didn’t play in its league title game? This situation could apply to both SMU and Boise State, which will take on UNLV in the Mountain West title game on Friday night.
Phillips and the ACC still feel burned by the committee for what happened a year ago, when undefeated conference champion Florida State was jumped by one-loss SEC champ Alabama for the No. 4 seed due to the impact of Seminoles quarterback Jordan Travis’ season-ending injury.
To that, Phillips says the committee should then be consistent.
“We heard from the committee that (FSU was) a different team (without Travis),” Phillips said. “Then I expect them to look at SMU differently. They’re 9-0 with Kevin Jennings as their starting quarterback. They were 2-1 and decided to make a change when they lost one game by three points to a top-20 BYU. SMU is in the CFP. To me, it’s not even debatable.”
Phillips also made the case that 10-2 Miami should be a top-10 team, ranked higher than other conferences’ bubble programs. Alabama, at 9-3, has three wins against teams in the Top 25, while Miami will have one or zero, depending on where Louisville ends up on Tuesday night. But the Tide have two losses to 6-6 teams, one of which was a 24-3 blowout loss at Oklahoma. Miami’s losses were by five points to 7-5 Georgia Tech and four points to 9-3 Syracuse. That Georgia Tech team just took Georgia to eight overtimes.
The committee thus far has appeared to view Miami’s resume favorably, ranking them sixth in last Tuesday’s rankings. But the Orange, like Louisville, could become a Top 25 team this week.
“To me, it’s very clear Miami has earned a top-10 ranking,” Phillips said. “Winning matters.”
Phillips concedes that Clemson will only make the CFP if it wins the ACC championship on Saturday, but he believes the Tigers should get a first-round bye if they win and not sit behind the Big 12 and Mountain West champions as the fifth-highest ranked conference winner.
The commissioner took heat from Florida State fans a year ago for not publicly pounding the table for Florida State to make the field before and after the final rankings. Phillips maintains he did what he could and that it didn’t get the attention it should have because many observers didn’t believe Florida State would be left out until it was. He also engaged in the normal behind-the-scenes lobbying to the selection committee members who serve as point persons for each conference.
But Phillips knows how it all looks. After his talk with The Athletic, he went on SiriusXM radio. He plans to do a lot more interviews this week. Other commissioners have begun to speak more publicly as well. It has become part of the job, not just for the sake of their league members but because fans want to see a commissioner fighting for them.
“You have to do it, which we are and we feel good about it,” Phillips said. “At the end of the day, the committee has to make the final decision. I feel incredibly good about the conversations we’ve had with the committee members and the information we’ve given them, but more importantly, just how well our teams have done.”
(Photo: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)