Should Hurricanes making national championship game change perception of ACC?
The perception surrounding the Atlantic Coast Conference was bleak in the lead up to announcing the College Football Playoff field.
A five-loss team in the Duke Blue Devils won the conference championship and the league’s highest-ranked team in the Miami Hurricanes didn’t even make the conference title game as the result of an inane tiebreaker procedure in which conference opponent win percentage determined the second team in the ACC Championship Game among five teams with two league losses. There was debate if the league would be shut out entirely from the 12-team College Football Playoff.
How are things going now for the ACC entering the College Football Playoff National Championship Game on Monday night?
Pretty good, one could say.
The Hurricanes (13-2), who snuck into the playoff field as the No. 10 seed and final at-large team, are playing for the championship against the No. 1 Indiana Hoosiers at Hard Rock Stadium — Miami’s home field. UM defeated a pair of Southeastern Conference teams in Texas A&M and Ole Miss and the defending national champion in Ohio State over the course of the three rounds.
But the success goes beyond Miami. The ACC overall has gone 9-4 in the postseason — Miami’s 3-0 record plus a 6-4 mark by the other 10 teams in the conference who reached bowl games.
“The ACC is a great league,” Hurricanes athletic director Dan Radakovich told the Miami Herald on Monday. “I think it’s incredibly balanced. This past year in the bowl season, we were very, very successful. I think that the ACC sometimes gets a little bit of a bad rub, but at the end of the day, there’s high, high quality football being played here in this league. And I think over the last couple of months, people have been able to see that.”
Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal on Monday also praised the state of the conference. UM has gone undefeated so far in nonconference play, including wins against Notre Dame and Florida along with its three playoff victories thus far. Miami’s two losses were 24-21 to the Louisville Cardinals on Oct. 17 and 26-20 at SMU in overtime on Nov. 1.
Both of those teams won their bowl games — Louisville beating the Toledo Rockets 27-22 in the Boca Raton Bowl and SMU beating the No. 17 Arizona Wildcats 24-19 in the Holiday Bowl — and finished the season 9-4.
“I think a lot of the reasons why we have progressed is some of the teams that we have faced throughout the course of the season in our conference,” Cristobal said. “The level of play from a quarterback standpoint and line of scrimmage standpoint, I think, has proven itself in the postseason. And for us, it proved itself against us and made us a better team in terms of making adjustments, increasing our level of physicality. And it’s been a really, really good year for the conference. If you look at the coaches that have been hired, the way the rosters are shaping up, both from a transfer portal and a high school recruiting standpoint, the conference is only going to get better and better, and we’re certainly appreciative of all of the support that we’ve gotten from the ACC and looking forward to more great years to come.”
Full ACC postseason results
College Football Playoff
First round: No. 10 Miami 10, No. 7 Texas A&M 3
Quarterfinal (Cotton Bowl): No. 10 Miami 24, No. 2 Ohio State 14
Semifinal (Fiesta Bowl) No. 10 Miami 31, No. 6 Ole Miss 27
Bowl games
Gasparilla Bowl: NC State 31, Memphis 7
Boca Raton Bowl: Louisville 27, Toledo 22
Hawai’i Bowl: Hawai’i 35, California 31
Pop-Tarts Bowl: No. 12 BYU 25, No. 22 Georgia Tech 21
Gator Bowl: No. 19 Virginia 13, Missouri 7
Military Bowl: ECU 23, Pittsburgh 17
Pinstripe Bowl: Penn State 22, Clemson 10
Sun Bowl: Duke 42, Arizona State 39
Holiday Bowl: SMU 24, No. 17 Arizona 19
Duke’s Mayo Bowl: Wake Forest 43, Mississippi Stte 29
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