After an underwhelming rivalry weekend with no major upsets, a 7-5 Duke University football team emerged from the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) to play in the conference championship game next weekend. They will face off against #16 University of Virginia in Charlotte, NC. Since the five highest ranked conference champions make the 12-team playoff field, if Duke wins the ACC championship, a five-loss team could make the College Football Playoff.
Duke University entered this season with pretty high football expectations, coming off a 9-4 season and landing Tulane University transfer Darian Mensah, a highly rated quarterback. Projections all indicated an upward trend, but until today, their season wasn’t exactly living up to this hopeful prospect, with a home blowout loss to the University of Illinois in Week 2, a loss to Tulane the next week, and a Week 11 loss to University of Connecticut on the road. However, they managed to lose just two games in ACC conference play over the course of the season, putting them in contention for a five-way tie for second place in the ACC going into this weekend. Nevertheless, it was still a long shot.
First and foremost, Duke needed to win their own game, an inter-state rivalry with Wake Forest University. They took care of that handedly, winning 49-32. #12 University of Miami destroyed #22 University of Pittsburgh, giving both teams two conference losses. On Saturday night, step three came to fruition, when University of California, Berkeley took down #21 Southern Methodist University (SMU), meaning that SMU had 2 conference losses, tied with Miami, Pitt, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duke. Normally, a tiebreaker comes down to who wins a head to head matchup; however, according to the ACC tiebreaker policy, in a three or more team tie, there is a whole new set of rules that takes place:
Here’s how this played out in real life:
- All five teams have not played each other, so they are not all common opponents.
- None of the tied teams defeated all the other tied teams.
- All teams had just one common opponent, Syracuse University, whom they all beat.
- Since they all played just one common opponent, the finishing order of common opponents does not matter.
- Finally, Duke wins the tiebreaker on combined opponent win percentage.
Take a look at the spreadsheet above, with Duke’s opponents highlighted in yellow. Duke’s opponents have an average conference win percentage of .500, with Miami and Georgia Tech tying for second with an opposing team average conference win percentage of 0.4375.
Unfortunately for ACC fans, this could impact their standing as a “power conference.” In college football, there are currently four conferences designated as “more powerful” than the rest: the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, and ACC. The way the playoff works, the five highest ranked conference champions receive autobids for the playoffs, so traditionally, there would be four power conference champions and one from the Group of Five (the five “less powerful” conferences). However, if Duke wins the ACC next weekend with five losses overall, the College Football Playoff committee could rationalize ranking two Group of Five conference champions ahead of Duke, meaning that the top five conference champions would be the winners of the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, and likely the American (Tulane or North Texas) and the Sun Belt (James Madison). Even though this scenario seems highly unlikely, Duke isn’t a long shot to win the ACC championship according to ESPN Bet. Regardless of what happens on Saturday, the fact is that the ACC is competing against Group of Five schools for a playoff spot. This is a rather embarrassing look for a conference with far more resources and name recognition than the American and Sun Belt. In my opinion, the ACC should just stick to basketball, and hopefully they’ll be able to redeem themselves come March.
