UNIVERSITY PARK — SMU is familiar with the fight to prove it belongs among the best.
It’s one the Mustangs battled through for three decades to return to power-conference status and sit atop the ACC standings entering the last three weeks of the regular season.
So when head coach Rhett Lashlee addressed the media Tuesday morning after practice, the fight he entered on behalf of the conference is one he’s no stranger to.
“To look at our league and say, ‘Well, we may be a one-bid league,’ but you look at another league that we have a winning record against and say, ‘Oh, they’re going to get four in,’ it doesn’t make sense to me,” Lashlee said. “Make it make sense.”
Lashlee entered a critical game week against Boston College with a powerful message in defense of his new conference, just one week after the first College Football Playoff rankings left SMU one spot out of the top 12. Hours after he spoke, the Mustangs dropped one spot to No. 14 in this week’s poll.
But SMU’s ranking wasn’t Lashlee’s primary concern.
Miami has been the only ACC team to earn a spot in the playoff bracket projections. The Big 12 also has just one team with undefeated BYU, meanwhile the Big Ten and SEC had four each, including a two-loss Alabama and Ole Miss teams. Two-loss Georgia is the first team out this week at No. 12, since No. 13 Boise State would slot in as the fifth conference champion.
The rankings showed where the committee’s biases lie, with a one-loss Penn State earning the sixth ranking in the preliminary rankings above undefeated Indiana and BYU and climbing two spots to No. 4 in the second edition. In an unprecedented year where the committee will select 12 teams to make the newly expanded playoff, every decision is critical — and the early indications show that ACC may be largely left behind.
“I just want our league to get the same respect that everyone else does,” Lashlee said. “I think we have at least two, probably three or four teams, still, that should be very well considered for the College Football Playoff.”
It comes just a year after undefeated ACC champion Florida State was left out of the College Football Playoff, a hurtful blow to one of the nation’s top conferences.
This season, with Miami boasting a Heisman candidate quarterback in its 9-0 start, it seemed there could be a possibility for two ACC teams to make it, should the Hurricanes suffer their first loss in the title game to another team like SMU.
But after Miami’s loss to Georgia Tech, the road to securing two bids appears more challenging. The Hurricanes dropped to No. 9 this week but would be a four-seed, as they currently occupy the spot of the fourth-highest-ranked conference champion.
“When other leagues beat each other up internally, they’re considered a deep, solid league. When we beat up internally, we’re considered a weak league,” Lashlee said. “There’s a lot of teams that should argue they should belong in, so I’m not discrediting anyone. But I think we’re way too early in the process to start acting like, ‘Well, this league gets this, and this league gets this,’ when some of these teams haven’t beat a ranked team or a team that’s going to a bowl game, and yet they’re just gifted in.”
Lashlee’s defense of the conference is strong on paper. The ACC has a winning record over the Big Ten (3-2) this year. While they have a 2-5 record against the SEC, they still have four matchups during rivalry week on Nov. 30 — Georgia vs. Georgia Tech, Louisville vs. Kentucky, Clemson vs. South Carolina and Florida vs. Florida State — meaning the ACC could hold the advantage in that series.
Even if it does, it may not matter. The ACC champion — just like the Big 12 champion — could be the only from each conference to earn a spot in the playoff.
That’s a concern for Lashlee, who wants to see his conference respected. It also clarifies what SMU has to do to earn a spot, even as no team in the top 12 has more wins over bowl eligible teams than it.
The Mustangs control their own destiny and are four wins away from automatically punching their ticket to the playoff and keeping the decision out of the committee’s hands.
“We’ve just got to win,” Lashlee said. “I’m not going to gripe or politic for us. We’ve got to win. If we don’t win, we don’t deserve to be in the conversation.”
On X/Twitter: @Lassimak
