The ACC is in jeopardy of seeing none of the conference’s teams advance to the College Football Playoff this year. While the ACC saw SMU and Clemson reach the playoff last year, they might have not have any teams vying for the national championship this time around.
With SMU losing to Cal on Saturday, 7–5 Duke will face No. 17 Virginia in the ACC championship game this weekend. If Duke wins, there’s a good chance that two Group of 5 conference champions will make the playoff instead of the ACC champion.
Outside of the ACC championship race, the conference’s best hope for a playoff team is Miami, which came in at No. 12 in this week’s CFP ranking. Miami is currently on the outside looking in despite the fact that they beat No. 10 Notre Dame, who is currently slated to advance to the CFP as the final at-large team.
The committee’s ranking of Notre Dame ahead of Miami has been a contentious issue throughout the weekly CFP rankings, since the Hurricanes took down the Fighting Irish head-to-head to start the season. Both teams are 10–2, but Notre Dame ranks two spots ahead.
In what appears to be an effort to remind the committee of that Miami win over Notre Dame and push for the Hurricanes’ postseason berth, the ACC Network will be replaying the Week 1 Miami-Notre Dame game 12 times in the lead up to the ACC championship game. The game will air multiple times a day throughout the week and once on Saturday as the conference pushes for Miami to get rewarded for that win and advance to the playoff.
Along with re-airing the Miami-Notre Dame game, the ACC will also be replaying Miami’s win over Florida multiple times this week. This could seemingly be a reference to Mario Cristobal’s response to Texas coach Steve Sarkisian earlier this week. After Sarkisian shaded Miami for running up the score to make themselves look better for the committee, Cristobal simply noted that Miami beat unranked Florida while Texas lost to them earlier this year. Miami currently ranks one spot ahead of Texas, which moved up to No. 13 after defeating Texas A&M.
The ACC will see its their tactics work on Sunday, when the 12-team bracket is announced.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as ACC Network Turning to Hilarious Tactic to Push Miami’s CFP Candidacy.
