On the outs
It's not just the committee that's kept Miami from the college football playoff. The ACC -- and its expanded, non-divisional footprint -- have played a part, too.
It’s a funny thing. I’ve spent the first two weeks of committee rankings ranting about the unfair treatment Miami has received being ranked well behind Notre Dame, a team with the same record (and, of note, half its schedule played vs. ACC teams) and whom Miami beat head to head.
I’ve spent so much time on that, in fact, that when I penned this week’s Anger Index, I decided to mostly avoid the Canes because -- what more was there to say? Instead, I wrote some on Alabama...
Alabama has beaten No. 4 Georgia, No. 14 Vanderbilt, No. 20 Tennessee and No. 22 Missouri.
Notre Dame has beaten ... well, only No. 15 USC.
And Oregon has a big win against ... sorry, it just says “Error 404: Page Not Found.”
And yet, the Tide check in at No. 10 this week, barely on the fringe of the playoff, behind both the Ducks and the Irish.
Why? Because Alabama had the temerity to lose a game last week by two points -- a game in which it missed a field goal attempt on a controversial tipped ball, nearly doubled Oklahoma’s yardage, and, based on net success rates, was clearly the unluckiest team in the country.
And on James Madison...
James Madison didn’t choose its schedule. It faces the teams in its league, and in 2025, the Sun Belt isn’t as good.
So what? While Tulane has struggled with the likes of Army and South Alabama, JMU has beaten its seven conference foes by an average of 24 points. Of JMU’s nine wins, only Georgia State came by fewer than 10 points. In the past month, the Dukes have won all their four games by a combined score of 208-80. No, they haven’t played great competition, but they’re dominating the teams they do face. Quality of wins is a metric teams control. Strength of schedule is not.
I’ll say that in both cases, I’m mostly playing devil’s advocate, but at least it was a new topic.
Oddly though, once I shut up some on Miami, it seems like the rest of the world has taken up the cause. This week was chock full of national voices noting that the committee’s approach was completely baffling, undermined the entire point of sports (winning) and somehow reasoned that nothing was more significant, for its purposes, than who has the best losses. (See: Utah, Oregon, Notre Dame but oddly not BYU).
Anyway, on Inside ACCess this week, we had Mario Cristobal on and, not surprisingly, he wasn’t super eager to talk about the rankings. He’s got two games left to win and last year was a reminder that he can’t take any of them for granted.
The Canes have VT and Pitt left to go -- both road games -- but if they win out, they’ll be 10-2 and may not even sniff the playoff.
Blaming the committee for this ridiculousness is perfectly reasonable. Their approach is, as I put it on today’s Inside ACCess, intended to leave everyone feeling like this...
But there’s another culprit here, too: The ACC.
No, not that the league stinks (a subject for another time) but that for the second straight year, the Canes are clearly one of the two best ACC teams, and for the second straight year, have almost no shot at playing for the ACC title.
According to ESPN Stats & Information, here’s what Miami needs to make the title game:
Actually, I have no idea all that needs to happen but it’s some combination of losses for Georgia Tech, Duke, SMU and an act of God.
In a league without divisions and with 17 teams, it’s just easy for this to happen. But the fact that everyone from 9-1 Georgia Tech to 5-5 Duke has a better chance of winning the ACC than its highest ranked team is almost as ridiculous as the committee’s take on Miami.
So here’s what I’d propose: Change how you handle the conference championship game.
Jim Phillips hinted at some outside-the-box ideas last summer that were mostly laughed off before other folks in the SEC and beyond started parroting them, and I’m not averse to considering them now. But I think there’s a simpler way.
Reward wins: Whoever has the best conference record makes the championship game, as always.
Reward quality: Whoever is the next highest ranked team also makes the championship game.
That way you’re not ever going to have to worry about a 7-5 Duke team winning the conference and costing the ACC a bid. Only the two best teams will make it, regardless of what the conference record is for one of those teams.
Don’t like the rankings? OK. We can go by SP+ or strength of record or whatever other metric you want.
I firmly believe you should be able to win your way into the title game. But where does it say the team that almost won the most conference games also should get in?
Focus on creating the best matchup and we don’t have to worry about the committee overlooking Miami. The Canes will be able to win their way into the playoff no matter what the committee thinks of them.
Hokies land their man
Cristobal’s opponent this week, by the way, is Virginia Tech, who made a splashy hire with James Franklin. I was in Blacksburg for the announcement on Wednesday, and my biggest takeaway is that the tone surrounding the future of the program has shifted a lot since Brent Pry was let go.
Back then, what I’d heard from numerous influential folks around the program is that major changes were coming -- “a house cleaning” as once source told me.
You can go back and read Andrea Adelson’s piece on Virginia Tech from a couple years ago to see just how little alignment there seemed to be at times.
And early in the hiring process, Bruce Arians -- himself a member of the hiring committee -- said Virginia Tech would hire a GM before a head coach, suggesting a modernization of the department that empowered an off-field personnel guy to oversee the football program.
But on Wednesday, I asked about the GM and AD Whit Babcock basically said it ain’t happening unless James Franklin wants to give one of his guys that title.
“A lot will depend on who Coach Franklin brings with him,” said Babcock, whose own future at Virginia Tech appeared on shakier ground before the Franklin hire. “If he has in mind someone who he’d like to be the general manager, that’s up to him. If he brings in a number of people who are great at player evaluation, and maybe we add some data analytics or rev share people. It’s really taking what we already do as a football staff and enhancing it.”
Now, I’m not entirely shocked by the change of heart. When Pry was fired and Arians talked about the GM, Franklin wasn’t on option. Then Penn State made a change, Bud Foster rolled out the red carpet for Franklin, the hiring committee all but begged Franklin to take the job, and the responsibility for the entire program is now in his hands.
Perhaps as surprising is that Franklin really seems to like working with Babcock, too.
So, it sure looks -- at least for now -- like that house cleaning is on hold in favor of allowing Franklin to simply build a new house.
And on that front, I asked him what that looked like when we spoke one-on-one Wednesday, and I thought his answer was really strong.
“One of the challenges of a lot of special places like Virginia Tech is people come, they fall in love with it, and they never leave, so they don’t have perspective. Have they seen what other places have that we’re competing against? ... I’m going to walk the facility and make it very obvious that, these things are nice and first class, and these things are dated and problematic and we need to get them fixed and fixed fast. ... There’s work that needs to be done. But there’s also promises that have been made. That’s all of it.
For me, it was about the staff budget. Am I going to be able to hire the right people? The overall operational budget. Are we going to operate like a big-time program? All those things need to be in place. NIL - that’s something we better be bold and aggressive about. This is where we’re at, and if you want to be relevant in this era of college football, you better be bold and aggressive. The previous coaches here were in some challenging situations here because of that.
There’s some things we’re going to have to look at, and it’s not just James Franklin being honest about my path. It’s the marketing department being honest. It’s the ticketing department being honest. Everybody’s got to take a look in the mirror and say, ‘Are we operating like a big-time program?’ And if we’re not, are we willing to make the changes necessary to get there. That’s on the coaches and the board and the president. ... There’s going to be some tough conversations along the way to make sure all the things we’ve talked about and the promises made are truly living up to that on a daily basis. And to me, that’s my job. My job is to hold the standard for everybody and to have those tough conversations.”
I think best-case scenario for Virginia Tech in 2026 is probably something akin to what Wake is doing now — keep some core guys, bring in talent from Penn State, add in the portal, focus on bringing in top recruits for 2027 and ideally get to eight, maybe nine wins.
What happens from there is going to be all about Franklin’s vision and if the folks controlling the purse strings and running the day-to-day are still as on board in a year as they sounded Wednesday.
What’s David reading, watching and listening to?
We haven’t done recommendations here in a bit, and I’ve got a bunch for you.
First, one that I hated: “Frankenstein.” I typically really enjoy Guillermo del Torro’s work -- aesthetically if not always narratively -- but boy oh boy was this a bore. Admittedly, I’ve never read the Mary Shelley book, and I guess it hems pretty close to the source material, but it ultimately feels like empty is so many ways. And, as Jerry Seinfeld rightly said, I prefer my Frankenstein’s monsters to wear a blazer. There’s just something about a monster in a sport coat. It at least shows he’s making an effort.
On the other hand, I cannot recommend Vince Gilligan’s new Apple+ offering, “Pluribus” more highly. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I also am not so sure that telling you a beat-for-beat rundown of what happened in the first three episodes really spoils it. The vibe, the performance, the atmosphere and the underlying questions the show asks are what makes it so spectacular.
What I will say, however, is that my pet theory through these first three episodes is that the show is actually an allegory for artificial intelligence and the future it may provide. Not a dark and terrifying future but a possibly more realistic one where AI actually does all the things its biggest optimists think it can.1 And by not making the show overtly about AI at all, I think it allows us to see both sides of the equation with a lot less bias.
Now, is it possible I’m reading something into the show that Gilligan didn’t intend? Maybe. But I think it fits too well not to have been on his mind as he was creating it, and I think it really sets a template to ask some really fundamental questions about the future of humankind.
Again, I can’t say enough good things.
Speaking of AI, I recently learned of Ethan Mollick’s Substack that largely tracks the happenings in the industry. It’s informative without being too over my head. Anyway, his latest post on the new Gemini 3 is a really good showcase of how far the technology has come. I get the folks who think it’s bullshit. I get the folks who are just afraid of it. And I think there are lots of people making claims that AI simply doesn’t live up to... yet. But to see the development in a nascent industry that’s happened in just three years is nothing short of astonishing.
Another work I loved without reservation: On my drive up and back from Blacksburg this week, I dove into Cameron Crowe’s memoir “The Uncool” on Audible. If you’re like me and love ‘70s-era rock, then it’s like going to the Golden Corral of great anecdotes about your favorite artists. But as a journalist, Crowe’s life is so fascinating and absurd and amazing, too. “Almost Famous” is one of my favorite movies, and the book basically unfurls the inspiration for all of it. But listening to the audio version of the book, which Crowe reads himself, is another treat, because the emotions really come through. At one point, when he talks about learning of Jim Croce’s death, he actually breaks down crying while reading the book. Anyway, I’m not quite finished with it yet but I’ll definitely have more to say on this down the road. It’s terrific.
And two more stories worth your time...
I spent two years living in Athens, so I was bummed to hear of the imminent closing of local institution Weaver D’s (”Automatic for the People). My pal Fletcher Page has a fantastic look at the place and the man who’s made it work for more than 30 years before he serves his last meal.
I also found this newsletter from Derek Thompson to be both heartbreaking and terrifying. He’s done a lot of work looking at the loneliness epidemic and, in particular, among young men. But what he’s consistently found is that loneliness is the wrong word for what’s happening with them. They’re not lonely. They’re opting out of society voluntarily in favor of a far more problematic -- but also less socially awkward -- lifestyle, and right now, they seem to have every incentive to keep doing it.
Lastly, I watched the new documentary on Netflix, “Being Eddie” -- about the now nearly 50-year career of Eddie Murphy. It was like a lot of docs these days that have the blessing and participation of its subject: Watered down, lacking a ton of insight, but nevertheless a pleasant stroll down memory lane.
And it’s worth asking: Has any actor ever had a run of films as good as Murphy had from 1982 to 1988? In those seven years, Murphy released:
48 Hours
Trading Places
Beverly Hills Cop
The Golden Child
Beverly Hills Cop II
Coming to America
And, while he was at it, put out “Delirious” and “Raw” stand-up shows.
Just an incredible run. He’s done some OK stuff since -- “Boomerang” was solid, “Bowfinger” is underrated, the Shrek films, etc. but man, that run was unmatched. Oh, and the role of Winston in “Ghostbusters” was actually written for him. Imagine if that had happened.
Week 13 ACC picks
Andrea is fully in the Boston College position for our picks bet now.
Here’s who we’ve got for Week 13…
My interest in AI started about 10 years ago when I first read this fantastic piece from Wait But Why. It’s crazy reading it again now and seeing how far down the road we already are. It’s terrifying and astonishing at the same time.