With the growth in members within a conference, the conference schedules are skewed as a team misses playing almost as many teams as it plays.
Thus, tiebreakers come into play. Annoyingly! Amazingly, a 5-loss Duke team got the nod for the ACC’s championship game.
Virginia is in the game as the conference’s only 1-loss team. Even their 1 conference loss comes with an asterisk, ast their loss to NC State had been deemed a “non-conference” game. Duke, Miami, SMU and Pitt all had 2 losses. Duke was deemed the 2nd team in the title game because the winning percentage of its “common” conference opponents were the highest of the 4. Which means that the ACC is praying for a Virginia win. If Duke wins, there is great danger that there will be no ACC team in the playoff. Automatic bids are only granted to the 5 highest ranked conference champions.If Miami’s Mario Cristobal ever learned how to be a good in-game coach, none of this chaos would have occurred.
In the Mountain West, 4 teams tied at 6-2. Computer rankings determined that UNLV travel to Boise for its champion tilt. The Odyssey wonders if the computers weighed the heavy factor that QB Maddux Madsen missed a chunk of the second half of the season.
The MAC tiebreaker provided another insane matchup. Miami, Toledo and Ohio all tied with 6-2 records. Miami lost to both Toledo and Ohio yet wound up in the conference title tilt!!! The MAC’s ultimate tiebreaker came down to records against common opponents. Miami went 3-0 in that tiebreaker so they are in!
The results from those conferences make the way the SEC solved their 4-way gridlock at 7-1 look relatively tame.