Clemson Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney often waxes poetic about his time as a former walk-on turned national champion with his alma mater, the Alabama Crimson Tide. It’s a rags-to-riches story that is a good reminder of what is still possible with a little hard work and a few good breaks going your way.

Going into the ACC championship game on Saturday night against the SMU Mustangs, however, Swinney has a chance to repay his former program by doing the funniest thing possible: send the Tide packing from the College Football Playoff and cause an already existing crisis of confidence in his league to spiral even further.

That’s how things are set up on conference title game weekend in the aftermath of the CFP selection committee’s penultimate set of rankings. As much as fans may have wanted to zero in on potential hosts for those opening-round playoff games or see if that Boise State Broncos bus can drive itself all the way to a first-round bye, the real inflection point was really a narrow band of two bubble teams where the debate this season comes down to. 

That would be No. 11 Alabama vs. the No. 12 Miami Hurricanes for the last spot in the bracket. One team left for dead just a few weeks ago is in. The team most assumed was safely in, all of seven days ago, appears down and out for the count. 

“Look, both of them are very good,” committee chairman and Michigan Wolverines athletic director Warde Manuel said in explaining the ordering of the pair. “The committee ranked Alabama one ahead of Miami, but it doesn’t diminish how we see Miami, even with the last three weeks where they have two losses. We still think Miami is a very strong team.

“It came down to a difference in their body of work as we evaluated Alabama and Miami, not just wins, not just losses, but the totality of the season and how those teams performed.”

In the 12-team CFP era, the four-seed versus the five-seed is a non-debate—last year’s controversy surrounding the Florida State Seminoles is a thing of the past. With expansion bringing clear guidelines surrounding how teams will stack up against each other and how they’re seeded, the first team out versus the last one in is where all the debate is rooted. This is where the committee is supposed to earn their nonexistent pay. 

If you were to ask those in the ACC, well, you’d probably get a response that those committee members voting on teams are not even worth that kind of paycheck at the moment. Conference commissioner Jim Phillips sent out a tersely worded statement all but pleading the same case.

“Miami absolutely deserves better from the committee,” the statement said, in part. “As we look ahead to the final rankings, we hope the committee will reconsider and put a deserving Miami in the field.”

Will they, though? As things stand now, that looks more like wishful thinking as opposed to the reality of the playoff field until Saturday’s results crystallizes it for good.

The Hurricanes have one of the best offenses in the country and are led by a dynamic, Heisman Trophy–candidate quarterback in Cam Ward. The only two blemishes on their resume are a pair of losses on the road by a combined nine points—to the Syracuse Orange and a Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets squad that just pushed the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs to eight overtimes. They had a quality, albeit not top 25, win over the Florida Gators in the Swamp and thumped the South Florida Bulls that the Tide struggled to put away for three quarters. They beat a nine-win Duke Blue Devils side and won a shootout over a solid Louisville Cardinals team, too. 

“Miami, up until the last three weeks, they’ve had a very good season. But they’ve lost two of the last three weeks,” Manuel said. “Miami, top offense in the country with 44 points and over 500 yards per game. So it’s really close. It’s not just one data point over the other.”

Meanwhile, the Tide may no longer have Nick Saban as their head coach but the brand bias may take a few years to fully filter out of the system. The committee seems to define them only with regard to their high ceiling as opposed to the glaringly obvious low floor that has shown up in three losses in conference play. 

Alabama is 3–1 against top-25 teams (wins against Georgia, the No. 19 Missouri Tigers and No. 14 South Carolina Gamecocks balanced out by a loss at the No. 7 Tennessee Volunteers). The Tide also have some inexplicable losses, all on the road, to the Vanderbilt Commodores and Oklahoma Sooners. Falling by a touchdown to the Vols at Neyland Stadium isn’t terrible, but it is one more in the loss column than Miami has overall. 

There’s little doubt the Tide have played a more challenging slate, but they’ve also lost to the dregs of their schedule. It says more about the November chaos that has subsumed the sport that Kalen DeBoer’s team is even in the field as opposed to sitting Selection Sunday firmly out. Such is the playoff picture at the moment, where you have to squint to make out the positives for teams down the rankings and find your reading glasses to parse the negatives. 

Then, there’s lil’ ol’ Clemson lurking around, seemingly waiting just for this moment to ruin their national rival from recent playoff runs in Alabama and conference mate Miami.  

The Tigers lost to South Carolina, but have the committee sitting on pins and needles this weekend as they backed into the game in Charlotte against SMU. Swinney’s side hasn’t beaten anybody of note (zero top-25 wins) and lost to the three teams with a pulse on their schedule (34–3 to Georgia in the opener, 17–14 to the Gamecocks and 33–21 to Louisville). They ate up a mediocre middle class in the ACC, but find themselves as the great beneficiaries of the new system: win your (Power 4) conference championship and you’re in the field. 

To borrow a March Madness term, the first bid thief in the playoff era is set to be Clemson if it can do what no ACC team has done so far and beat the Mustangs.

It might give new meaning to Swinney’s catchphrase: “Bring your own guts.” It certainly is going to cause some queasy ones in Grapevine, Texas, as the committee debates where in the field to put ACC champion Clemson, should the Tigers win, and what might happen to SMU. 

“Potentially, yes,” Manuel said when asked if SMU could drop behind Alabama. “And they can move above teams, as well. Again, it just depends on the outcome of the game.”

Spare a penny for those around Phillips on Saturday night should that scenario come to fruition. It’s bad enough his league is being sued by Clemson, imagine how he’ll feel handing over a trophy that may well cost the conference yet another spot in the playoff, too? 

If there’s any solace to those in Charlotte, at least a Tigers win will also render the Alabama discussion moot. 

Funny how things could work out. Something says the committee won’t be chuckling when they have to cast their final votes in the end, though.

Nate Oats’ No. 10-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide (6-2, 0-0 SEC) will not enjoy the services of graduate guard Latrell Wrightsell in its SEC/ACC Challenge road showdown against UNC basketball head coach Hubert Davis and his No. 20 Tar Heels (4-3, 0-0 ACC) in the Dean E. Smith Center at 7:15 p.m. ET Wednesday (ESPN).

ALSO READ: UNC Coach Names Main Concerns From Tar Heels’ Letdown in Maui

In fact, Wrightsell is now out for the season with a ruptured Achilles, Oats told the media on Tuesday afternoon. The second-year Alabama sharpshooter, a fifth-year collegian after spending his first three seasons at Cal State Fullerton, suffered the injury on a 3-point attempt in the second half of the Tide’s 83-81 loss to now-No. 12 Oregon in the Players Era Festival title bout in Las Vegas on Saturday.

At the time of his injury, Wrightsell had already reached double-digit points in only 15 minutes on the floor.

Across Alabama’s first eight games, Wrightsell was the squad’s third-leading scorer, averaging 11.5 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 2.0 assists in 25.8 minutes per outing. Plus, he led the Tide at 42.2 percent shooting beyond the arc on 5.6 attempts per game.

Meanwhile, the UNC basketball team, looking to snap its two-game losing skid, appears to be injury-free for the highly anticipated rematch from Alabama’s 89-87 victory over the Tar Heels in last season’s Sweet 16.

ALSO READ: Tar Heels Dip Below Second ACC Squad in Both Major Polls

Stay tuned to North Carolina Tar Heels On SI for more UNC basketball news.

The College Football world has shifted focus on the inaugural 12-team Playoff as the 2024 regular season came to a close on Saturday.

In the four-team Playoff format that lasted for a decade, no two-loss program ever made the elite cut. One big question that’s stemmed from the 12-team format is if a three-loss team can be in the same conversation as an undefeated, one-loss or two-loss program.

Alabama finished the regular season at 9-3, and it may be difficult for the Crimson Tide to be a part of the inaugural 12-team cut. Alabama has become the center of attention as a team that could challenge the three-loss obstacle due to its plethora of impressive wins this season.

On Monday evening, Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne took to X (formerly known as Twitter), to make his pitch for why his program meets the requirements to contend for what would be the Crimson Tide’s 19th National Championship title.

“Here’s a good look at the numbers/rankings for Alabama football,” Byrne said. “Recognize there’s lots of chatter out there about 2 vs. 3 loss teams, however that is just one factor. When you look at the College Football Playoff Principles for its Selection Committee, the first bullet point on the list of considerations is strength of schedule. Not all schedules and conferences are created equal.

“We’ve worked diligently to add more challenging non-conference home-and-homes, which is good for college football, not to mention the week-in and week-out of the SEC and it being the toughest in the country.”

Alabama Athletic Director Greg Byrne’s Pitch

Byrne, who is a member of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee, is the second person involved with Alabama athletics to make his case to the CFP committee on Monday, as left guard and co-captain Tyler Booker also delivered his pitch this morning.

Alabama’s schedule has certainly been one of the toughest among the other teams being considered to make the College Football Playoff, but the Tide has ranked wins over current No. 7 Georgia, No. 15 South Carolina and No. 21 Missouri. However, losses to current No. 8 Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Oklahoma give the committee quite the head-scratcher.

We’ll find out if Alabama’s chances increase a bit during Tuesday’s College Football Playoff rankings show at 6 p.m. CT on ESPN.