This began a voice-of-the-fan recap of the Miami Hurricanes’ regular season-ending loss at Syracuse; the Orange rallying from a 21-0 early second quarter deficit and outscoring the Canes, 42-17 from that point on—sending Clemson to the ACC Championship against SMU, while Miami hoped and prayed for a Tuesday night miracle with the College Football Playoffs rankings were released.
Once the snub was official, zero reason to dissect anything Syracuse-related as the reality of a 10-2 run—the top-ranked offense in the country and two losses by a combined nine points not being enough to get Miami in; the vitriol shifts towards a bought-and-sold committee and a long-running SEC bias that leave the Canes on the outside looking in.
It’s akin to being a parent, your kid doing something stupid and you on the verge of letting them have it—only to see some other adult chime in to correct or disrespect them to the point you back-burner dealing with your offspring as your focus immediately shifts to the outsider who is out of line.
Miami controlled its own destiny; beat Georgia Tech or Syracuse and they’re not in this position!
Fair enough, but spare the sanctimonious posturing considering this SEC-obsessed committee just died on a hill for a three-loss Alabama team that got wrecked by Vanderbilt and Oklahoma teams that both finished 6-6 in games the Crimson Tide was favored to win by three touchdowns.
Miami lost by four to a Syracuse team that finished 9-3—sporting the second-best transfer portal quarterback—while Oklahoma smashed Alabama, 24-3 in Norman and lowly Vanderbilt dropped an extra-spicy 40-piece in Nashville.
Even more infuriating; Alabama only slipped six spots in the polls for each embarrassing loss; from No.1 to No. 7 after falling to the Commodores and then down to No. 13 after the Sooners spanked them—while Miami plummeted from No. 6 to No. 14 when Syracuse edged them out late, which ultimately was a deciding factor when the latest College Football Playoff poll was released.
Perception is reality, even if it’s bullshit—and this season’s ongoing myth; a belief that today’s SEC is the same powerhouse of years passed, when it’s clearly been watered down due to NIL money and transfer portal defectors—both of which are a big reason Nick Saban is no longer in Tuscaloosa and the Crimson Tide reeled in Kalen DeBoer from Washington.
The key to Saban’s dominance at Alabama wasn’t just in the recruiting, but the stockpiling of talent and having a two- and three-deep that could go toe-to-toe with other teams’ first stringers.
Georgia followed suit when Kirby Smart took over as the Bulldogs looked to emulate what the Crimson Tide were doing to be head and shoulders above the rest.
Fast-forward a few years and pretty much all those next-in-line superstars have scattered for a couple extra bucks and an immediate starting opportunity—which warrants a bigger conversation about the current state of college football as a whole—but the context of this debate will focus on why the SEC isn’t the same conference it’s been in years passed, no matter how much the College Football Playoffs committee folk want to gaslight fans into believing it is.
Alabama hasn’t lost three games in a season since 2010—and even then it was two road losses to No. 19 South Carolina and No. 10 LSU before losing by a point to No. 2 Auburn—a far cry from tanking against two .500 teams and an underachieving No. 11 Tennessee this fall; the Volunteers’ offense imploding against their own 6-6 imposter when lowly Arkansas got the better of them in early October.
These two are hardly the only culprits in this overhyped conference.
South Carolina is case-building their 9-3 season—which in their defense could be 10-2 after a questionable penalty on a pick-six—but there’s still that 27-3 home drubbing they took at the hands of Ole Miss, while choking away a home opportunity against this same Alabama squad with two ugly losses.
Lane Kiffin got lippy after his Rebels landed outside the magic number; another 9-3 squad hanging its hat on upsetting Georgia early November—but the season started to derail late September when an eventual 4-8 Kentucky rolled in to Oxford to upset them; not to mention a road loss against an LSU that was No. 13 at the time but is now 8-4 and unranked while Ole Miss gets credit for beating a then-ranked squad.
Kiffin took his pot-shots as the system itself, while overpraising his conference and resume; not-so-thinly-veiled digs at Miami and others who don’t play SEC ball—conveniently leaving out that Ole Miss was ultimately ousted from the playoffs due to a recent loss at 5-5 Florida; a team Miami rolled into Gainesville and dismantled 41-17 earlier in the year.
The top-dog in Oxford also conveniently glossed over the fact that a Louisville team Miami took out at home; they just smashed Kentucky into 41-14 oblivion—making the Rebels’ home loss the Wildcats look that much worse as the SEC was again wrecked by he ACC … but why let a little logic and reason get in the way of a jaded SEC coach going scorched earth on social media for attention.
Weeks after the Canes rolled in ‘The Swamp’, lowly Cal—an eventual 6-6 squad and Pac-12 defector in their first season of ACC play—flew cross country to play at Auburn, where they tamed the Tigers at Jordan-Hare—while just last week the same Georgia Tech team Miami caught guff for losing to in Atlanta; they jumped out to a 17-0 lead in Athens over Georgia, pushed it to 27-13 and were a correct targeting call away from beating the Bulldogs in regulation, before falling by two in eight overtimes.
For years the ACC has gotten trashed for cannibalizing itself as there’s maybe one clear annual contender, while the rest of the mid-tier teams feast on each other—something the SEC seemed immune to in era where you had an Alabama, an LSU or a Georgia playing at a high level and destroying lesser competition—which absolutely wasn’t the case this year.
Tennessee is still in the mix as a two-loss team, non-conference title game-bound SEC contender—alive due to upsetting Alabama and losing by two touchdowns to Georgia—but buried in the storyline, the fact the Vols fell to an awful .500 Arkansas team; the Razorbacks one of three teams who actually lost to 3-9 Oklahoma State this year, while their high-flying offense was held to 14 points in Fayetteville.
Texas A&M got worked by Notre Dame in the opener, rattled off six wins from there, got and then got smashed by South Carolina and a terrible Auburn team before falling short against Texas; a Big 12 defector who is now currently the highest-ranked SEC team and headed to the conference title game for a rematch against Georgia.
Point being, any higher-ranked SEC team with a signature win also has a embarrassing signature loss—or losses—on their resumes as well, yet all of that was swept under the rug when the committee went into spin city-mode justifying sliding three-loss Alabama into that No. 11 slot.
Of course a big reason these embarrassing losses don’t register the way they once did is due to the parity in today’s game and the type of common, lopsided loses that simply didn’t exist years ago.
Almost two decades ago an Appalachian State rolling into Ann Arbor and upsetting No. 5 Michigan—it made the cover of Sports Illustrated that week and it proved to be a cultural moment, opposed to a shift in the game’s landscape—much like months prior when Boise State got into a shootout with Big 12 champion, seventh-ranked Oklahoma; the Broncos upsetting the Sooners in overtime on a trick two-point conversion.
Those two games remain footnotes in college football history as they were an aberration then as the type of parity in today’s game simply didn’t exist yet—which is why nobody blinked when No. 5 Notre Dame was upset in South Bend by a Northern Illinois team that lost four of its next five games, starting with an overtime debacle at Buffalo a week later.
The entire college football world grinds to a halt years back if a Saban-led, top-ranked Alabama team ever fell to an SEC basement-dweller like Vanderbilt—this year’s upset the most-embarrassing for the Crimson Tide since St. Nick stumbled in his inaugural season with a home lose to Louisiana Monroe in 2007.
Prior to this year’s showdown in Nashville, Alabama had beaten Vanderbilt 23 times in a row and 46 of the past 48 meetings, dating back to 1960—while Alabama and Oklahoma last met with higher stakes in the 2018 College Football Playoffs, where the Crimson Tide won a competitive 45-34 ballgame, opposed to the 21-point shellacking a sub-par Sooners’ squad delivered weeks back.
The sport is a dozen years removed from a season where No. 1 LSU outlasted No. 2 Alabama, 9-6 in overtime in what was billed as the “game of the year”—these two divisional foes meeting again for the national championship after the Tigers won the SEC title game the Tide was shut out of, but getting their revenge as Saban’s squad rolled 21-0 to secure back-to-back nattys.
Despite how far the SEC is from that brand of dominant football, Alabama still received that benefit of the doubt from a CFP committee that really looks bought and paid for by the biggest conference and brand in the game.
“It really came down to Alabama 3-1 versus current top 25 teams, Miami was 0-1. Alabama 6-1 versus teams over .500, Miami 4-2,” the explanation from committee mouthpiece Warde Manuel when interviewed Tuesday night after the selection show—cherry-picked criteria and a convenient case-building effort distracting from the fact Alabama lost two games to teams that finished 6-6 while Miami lost one-score games to teams that finished 7-5 and 9-3.
Warde took that whole saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud a step further when doubling-down on the committee not adjusting rankings for teams who are idle this weekend—meaning there’s no scenario that Miami could leapfrog Alabama, which is nonsensical considering this weekend’s SEC and ACC championship games could absolutely do more to prop up one conference while diminishing another.
Alabama’s signature win is their last-second comeback against two-loss Georgia—and if Texas were to follow what Georgia Tech just did in Athens, a Longhorns’ rout of the Bulldogs should absolutely be a blow to the Crimson Tide’s resume.
Conversely, if SMU runs Clemson out of Charlotte, it takes some luster over South Carolina topping the Tigers by a field goal last weekend in Charleston—again, a Clemson team run out in their own house by a Louisville team that Miami topped on the road, as well.
If the margins truly are razor-thin between No. 11 Alabama and No. 12 Miami then a committee chairman has no business telling the college football world in advance that the decision is final and nothing can be done to change that—a preemptive strike that reeks of corruption and bias that he doesn’t want questioned or challenged; both of which are now being done by pundits, critics and fans for days since the rankings were released.
Miami controlling their own destiny and winning at Syracuse aside, the masses are openly questioning how a three-loss Alabama team slides in over the two-loss Hurricanes.
Yes, the defense isn’t consistent—but the offense is the best in the nation and is led by the most-exciting quarterback in the nation, a three-headed monster at running back and a who’s who of capable clutch receivers—Miami proving it can score against anybody, even if there are question marks surrounding how to slow down the competition.
The Hurricanes are truly a few plays from 12-0 just as they are 8-4—landing at 10-2 and doing enough to earn an at-large bid; over-punished for close wins over two pretty good football teams, while wins against everyone else on the schedule get downplayed.
41-17 at Florida in the opener? Well that’s only because the Gators were a mess then, but got better as the year went on—while ACC-preseason favorite No. 10 Florida State was the one who fumbled the bag, going 2-10 this season in year five under Mike Norvell.
Why is it Miami’s fault that it played a solid ACC conference and scheduled a bonus SEC team as an out-of-conference game—yet get punished for imperfection—while some in-the-hunt SEC teams lose more games and are given a larger margin for error due to conference perception?
Outside of playing Florida, Miami also scheduled Ball State and South Florida earlier this season—as well as a standard warm-up game against Florida A&M—before going into conference play late September and taking on nothing but ACC competition ever since.
Conversely, pretty much the entire SEC gets no criticism for late season stat-padding and self-preservation; all the culprits taking a page from Urban Meyer, who started the practice of late-November, pre-rivalry week cupcakes as a way to not just rest starters and get a bye-week like experience—without sacrificing routine—while pretty much every other conference rolls on with conference-play and late-season losses knock potential contenders out of the race.
A week before Alabama had to buckle in for their late November showdown at Oklahoma, the Crimson Tide slid Mercer onto their schedule—an FCS program out of Macon, Georgia—which proved to be a glorified, paid-for scrimmage that ended 52-7 in the home team’s favor.
Alabama is hardly the only SEC culprit as the the past few weeks have seen Maine at Oklahoma, UMass at Mississippi State, UL-Monroe at Auburn, UTEP at Tennessee, Wofford at South Carolina, Louisiana Tech at Arkansas, New Mexico State at Texas A&M and UMass at Georgia—while nobody in the media dares mention this clever-yet-integrity-less cheat-code as they fall in line and kiss the ring.
While some Miami faithful want to hold out home for a Championship Saturday miracle that can change this broken narrative, conventional wisdom realistically should have Hurricanes Nation praying for the type of utter chaos that brings change.
Somewhere out there Florida State fans are laughing at Miami’s misery and citing their snub last fall, though the two situations are nothing alike as Alabama was not just 12-1 at this time in 2023—they were also the SEC Champs, having dethroned No. 1 Georgia—ending a 29-game win-streak for the back-to-back conference and national champions.
There’s also the numbers game and the fact that a then 13-o ACC Champion was left out of a four-team playoff for a one-loss SEC Champion—compared to a 12-team playoff in 2024; a three-loss Alabama team with two ugly wins and not good enough to participate in this weekend’s conference championship game.
Last year’s four-team finale also cost a Georgia team looking for a three-peat—riding a win-streak that dated back to the 2021 SEC title game—where a field goal loss in a conference championship game sent the one-loss Bulldogs to the No. 6 slot in the final College Football Playoff rankings as Florida State was sandwiched between them and champion Alabama.
This year’s expanded field was supposed to clear up that type of chaos, with the mindset that any confusion surrounding those last teams in wouldn’t really matter—but with mythical SEC supremacy continuing to cloud judgment, further proof this system still needs tweaking—and how apropos that Miami is again on the wrong side of process that will require change.
In 2000 it was a title game snub where the human polls had Miami ranked No. 2 and set to face No. 1 Oklahoma for the national championship, before the computer polls inexplicably dropped the Canes a rung and slid Florida State into the two-slot, despite the one-loss Canes handing the defending champion Noles their only loss of the season—resulting in head-to-head competition being a bigger factors for the BCS in the years to come.
Two years later Miami loses a bid at history and back-to-back national championships, while watching a 34-game win-streak end on a controversial pass interference call against Ohio State in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl.
Of course a few years later replay is now commonplace in the game—pass interference calls now reviewable: another good fix that unfortunately came after the Hurricanes were on the wrong side of history.
Who’s to say how far Miami’s run would go as an 11-seed if the College Football Playoff committee got this thing right; most-likely a road game at Notre Dame or Penn State in the cards—where a win would be followed by a match-up against the third-seeded ACC champ in the next round—which is why the Hurricanes are so rattled by being robbed of their chance to compete.
Chaos is usually the biggest catalyst for change and if Miami is going to land on the outside looking in, rooting against a biased committee and wanting them to be under the microscope and lambasted for a half-baked system—that is the silver lining in getting robbed of this high-level postseason birth.
While it’s not worth wasting any energy rooting for one outcome or another, it would be comical to see Manuel and the committee squirming on Saturday night if three-loss Clemson earns the bid by taking out SMU in a close game—now trying to justify keeping three-loss Alabama in over an ACC runner-up who finished 11-2.
Same to be said for Texas sticking it to Georgia and handing the Bulldogs a lopsided third loss—where the same eight-slot AP and Coaches Poll slide Miami experienced for dropping a four-point game to Syracuse would have fifth-ranked UGA at No. 13 and out of the mix.
Throw in an ugly, sloppy Big 12 title game slug-fest between No. 15 Arizona State and No. 16 Iowa State—where neither team looks good and worthy of that final slot—as well as No. 20 UNLV sticking it to No. 14 Boise State for some added chaos considering the Rebels lost to Syracuse earlier this season, yet are CFP-bound if they upset the Broncos.
Hell, bonus points for Notre Dame sliding into that fifth slot as well—so much recent conversation surrounding how that position really is the catbird seat as a home-field win over No. 12 has the No. 5 team taking on No. 4 in the next round, while the top three face much stiffer competition in their post-bye round—all of which makes the conference-less Irish a target for criticism, while the heat gets turned up regarding pushing Notre Dame out of their little Independent comfort zone.
While a 12-team playoff is light year’s better than four teams, two teams or an antiquated bowl system where the pre-BCS era often saw the top-ranked teams in the game not facing off due to bowl alliances—many felt that 16 was always a better number and that first-round byes were unnecessary.
The Sweet 16 of college football, where No. 1 plays No. 16 and so on—home-field advantage for the higher-ranked squad—where you’re down to eight after the first weekend of the post-season and from there, another home game, or a reimagined bowl schedule until you’re down to the championship game.
Beyond that, a reworking of this current system where the standard two or three annual cupcake games are done away with in favor of mandated out-of-conference match-ups where the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 are settling their differences on the field, instead of letting some eggheads in a boardroom spout their theories over bland coffee and stale donuts—real data and analytics for the win.
It ain’t over ’til it’s over, even if it feels like this story has already been written—so with that, bring on sheer and utter chaos that puts a stain on this season that forces change in 2025.
That, or just correct this week’s flub and stick Miami in at No. 11 where it belongs as nobody is buying what joke of a committee is selling with three-loss, watered-down, Saban-less Alabama.
Christian Bello has been covering University of Miami athletics since the mid-nineties. Getting his start with CanesTime, he eventually launched allCanesBlog—which led to a featured columnist stint with BleacherReport. He’s since rolled out the unfiltered, ItsAUThing.com where he’ll use his spare time to put decades of U-related knowledge to use for those who care to read. When he’s not writing about ‘The U’, Bello is a storyteller for some exciting brands and individuals—as well as a guitarist and songwriter for his Miami-bred band Company Jones, who released their debut album “The Glow” in 2021. Hit him on Twitter for all things U-related @ItsAUThingBLOG.
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