The Clemson Tigers won the ACC championship on Friday night in thrilling fashion, beating SMU, 34-31, on a walk-off 56-yard field goal.
That win not only puts Clemson in the College Football Playoff, but it also creates some potential havoc down the bracket and could have massive implications for the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Alabama was in the 12-team field after the most recent rankings on Tuesday night, but there was nothing comfortable about its placement. Since the Crimson Tide were not playing in a conference championship game of their own, their easiest path to secure a playoff spot was going to be for SMU to defeat Clemson in the ACC game.
Or, perhaps, hope that Clemson beat SMU so soundly and so emphatically that it might cause the committee to drop it below Alabama in the final ranking.
Neither happened.
Not only did a three-loss Clemson team win the ACC to leapfrog Alabama in the field, but SMU played so well and made the game so close that it is going to be almost impossible for the committee to ignore it.
Alabama’s argument is going to be the same as it is for every borderline SEC team.
“We play in the SEC, and the SEC is the best conference, and that means something.”
Or something along those lines.
While that might be true, taking a three-loss Alabama team that did not even reach its own conference title game over a two-loss SMU team that was a field goal away from beating Clemson would be quite a leap for the committee, especially when two of those three losses for Alabama came against a 6-6 Vanderbilt team and a 6-6 Oklahoma team.
Clemson did what it needed to do on Saturday by winning its conference title game.
SMU should have done enough by making it a game and taking it to the wire, going into the postseason with just two losses.
Alabama had a chance to do what it needed to do against Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. It failed. It has nobody to blame but itself if it misses the 12-team field on Sunday.
