Karma comes at you in strange ways. Sometimes it hits like a sledgehammer, sometimes like a creeping fog. And sometimes karma shows up on a mustang.
SMU is one of the best teams in the ACC this season, a legitimate competitor for the conference championship and the playoffs, despite the Mustangs receiving none of the ACC’s TV riches. That’s funny enough, but when you take into account another element — Florida State’s woeful faceplant in 2024 — it elevates SMU’s season to the level of art.
The Mustangs are 5-0 in the ACC, 8-1 overall, leading the conference and in prime position to challenge for a first-round appearance in the College Football Playoff. Florida State, meanwhile, is 1-7 in the conference and 1-9 overall, a failure so catastrophic it will scar this program for years to come.
Yes, the irony is thick here; Florida State is in the midst of a lawsuit against the SEC over what the school alleges is an unfair distribution of media rights revenue. The lawsuit is widely seen as a pretext for FSU to leave the ACC, which is tied to a TV deal until 2036, for richer pastures.
Meanwhile, SMU has not accepted TV revenue from the ACC, the price required to enter the conference, for nine years. It turns out to be excellent exposure for SMU, and a great deal for the ACC – at least the bully kicking everyone’s ass isn’t taking their lunch money. Yet.
So let’s do what the rest of the ACC has done and leave Florida State behind. How legitimate is SMU as a competitor? In both the AP and CFP rankings, the Mustangs are ranked No. 14 and behind Miami, despite SMU losing to Big 12 leader BYU and Miami losing to unranked Georgia Tech.
The disparity in the rankings is largely a result of the disparity between the two early in the season, and soon it won’t matter anymore; if both Miami and SMU win, they will meet in the ACC Championship in December with an almost certain CFP first-round playoff on the line. The additional question is: would the number two in the ACC get a place in the play-off with two defeats?
The answer: probably not. The reason: Ole Miss, which jumped from 16th in last week’s rankings to 11th this week, just above SMU. Big wins apparently play a big role in the CFP committee’s thinking, and SMU doesn’t have any big wins left to play outside of the ACC Championship. The Mustangs close with Boston College (5-4, 2-3 conference), Virginia (5-4, 3-3) and Cal (5-4, 1-4) – great schools, all, but not some you need if you are looking for football legitimacy.
The problem facing both SMU and Miami is — even more ironically — exactly what Florida State is partially complaining about: the ACC as a conference is so weak that a standard conference schedule doesn’t provide enough meat for a convincing case of higher rankings. Their causes were also hurt: Both Miami and SMU managed to avoid Clemson, the only other team in the ACC with any kind of national weight.
In fact, even so far in the season, Miami and SMU only have three common opponents – stupid expanded conferences – and they are both 3-0 against those opponents. Both teams defeated Louisville by a touchdown and defeated FSU. SMU needed overtime to beat Duke, while Miami easily handled the Blue Devils. Cal is still waiting on SMU’s slate; Miami had a memorable comeback win against the #Calgorithm earlier this season.
CFP Committee Chairman Warde Manuel discussed the SMU-of-Miami issue when announcing the rankings, saying the committee’s feeling was that Miami was ahead of SMU in terms of their performance this year.
Regarding numbers, Manuel is probably right; Miami averages almost 100 yards more offense and five points per game than SMU. Record-wise? Um. That’s where things get muddy, and beauty pageants generally don’t choose muddy contestants.
Do not expect the SMU to follow the logic of the CFP. “If you look at our league and say, ‘Well, we might be a one-bid league,’ but you look at another league that we have a winning record against and say, ‘Oh, they get four,'” It doesn’t make sense,” SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee told the media on Tuesday “Make it make sense.”
The ACC leads the Big Ten 3-2 this season, and while the conference is 2-5 against the SEC, four rivalry games remain to be played between the ACC and the SEC.
You can debate the committee’s verdict – again, who would you rather see on the other side of the field: BYU or Georgia Tech? – but fortunately for SMU, the best remedy awaits at the end of the season.
“We just have to win,” Lashlee added. “I’m not going to complain or do politics for us. We have to win. If we don’t win, we don’t deserve to be in the conversation.”
There may be only one path to the CFP for SMEs, but it is direct, with no turns or questions. And mustangs can run very fast in a straight line.