College football’s championship weekend kicked off on Friday with four conference championship games, including a couple with significant College Football Playoff implications. Here are some key takeaways from the games and what could be ahead on Saturday.
Tulane should be playoff-bound
The most significant game on Friday was the American Conference Championship Game between No. 20 Tulane and No. 24 North Texas. The stage was set for the winner of that game to all but guarantee itself to be the highest-ranked group-of-five team and punch its ticket to the College Football Playoff.
Tulane ended up getting the win, 34-21, holding off a late North Texas rally.
Tulane finishes the regular season 11-2, with its two losses being an ugly 45-10 loss to Ole Miss and a 48-26 loss to UTSA.
The biggest knock on the Green Wave is the lack of a signature win.
Going into Friday’s best win of the season was a 34-27 win over Duke. In theory, a win over No. 24 North Texas should be the biggest win, but Tulane beat them so convincingly that it is almost certainly going to knock them out of the top-25 in the final rankings, thus negating the impact of it in the discussion.
But even that won’t matter because there is almost no chance that Tulane will not be the highest-ranked group-of-five team in the final rankings. Especially given what else happened on Friday night.
James Madison took care of business, but it wasn’t pretty
The other prominent group-of-five team in action on Friday was No. 25 James Madison, winning the Sun Belt championship with a 31-14 win over Troy.
At first glance, a 17-point win in a conference championship game is probably considered taking care of business and doing what needed to be done.
But there was nothing pretty about this win for James Madison, and the outcome was very much in doubt until the final four minutes of the fourth quarter, when it was still a one-score game.
The eye test is a part of the rankings, and with zero big-time wins, struggling against Troy as a 24-point favorite at home and already being on the fringes of the top-25, there is a chance that James Madison did not actually help its cause for a potential playoff spot.
That is important because there is still the nuclear situation for the College Football Playoff that could be set off if Duke beats Virginia in the ACC championship game on Saturday.
Who is the fifth automatic bid if Duke wins?
If Duke somehow stuns the college football world on Saturday and wins the ACC championship with five losses, that would set the wheels in motion for the ACC to be potentially left out of the playoff and two group-of-five teams finding their way into the playoff.
We know Tulane is going to be in.
The question would become “Who else gets in if Duke wins?”
Would the committee rank a five-loss Duke team ahead of James Madison?
Was James Madison’s win good enough to keep them ranked as one of the five-highest-ranked conference champions?
Could somebody like Boise State, winner of the Mountain West, get ranked ahead of both Duke and James Madison with four losses?
All of these questions go away if Virginia takes care of its business and simply beats Duke. That is far from a guarantee, because college football has a way of being chaotic. Especially when it comes to playoff situations.
These questions also would have been irrelevant if James Madison had delivered a more convincing win. It did not. Now there is the chance for chaos.
