The first 12-team College Football Playoff, or CFP, is about halfway over. Unfortunately for Syracuse, what’s happened so far could hurt the Orange’s chances to both get in and advance going forward.
ACC Disappointments
It was a great sign for the ACC that the conference got two teams into the CFP. Clemson pretty much had to be in as a power conference champion, but SMU battled with Alabama for the last slot. While the Mustangs did end up making the field, that might have hurt them and their conference in the long run. SMU got demolished 38-10 by Penn State. While blowouts have happened quite often in the overall CFP era, the immediate takeaway for many powerful voices, like Kirk Herbstreit, was that SMU didn’t deserve to be in the playoff in the first place.
Next year will be monumental in setting the precedent for how many teams each conference is “worthy” of sending to the College Football Playoff. If the second-best ACC team is spurned for a fourth or fifth team from the SEC or Big Ten, then it’s bad news for Syracuse and the rest of the conference for the foreseeable future.
Guaranteed Byes… Bye-Bye?
Something else to pay attention to is the dialogue about getting rid of guaranteed byes for the four highest seeded conference champions. That conversation was kick-started by all four teams with a bye losing in their first CFP game this year. If there is a change made so that the byes just go to the top four teams, regardless of conference champion status, then Syracuse’s path to a bye would be even more difficult going forward.
