Is there a potential mess looming for the ACC?

One ESPN analyst believes that could be the case.

On his Always College Football show, Greg McElroy gave his top 10 takeaways from Week 8 in college football – including a nightmarish scenario Clemson, Miami and SMU hope to avoid in an Atlantic Coast Conference that’s there for the taking.

McElroy broke down that scenario, starting with the fact the Tigers (5-0 ACC), Hurricanes (3-0) and Mustangs (3-0) are all unbeaten in conference play.

“I know Pitt is, too. But Pitt plays two of the aforementioned three, so that will resolve itself,” McElroy added. “And like I said, what are the odds of Miami, Clemson and SMU winning every game from here on out? The odds are really small.

“But let’s just have fun, because we like what-if scenarios in college football. Well, those three teams don’t play each other. None. Miami doesn’t play Clemson, Clemson doesn’t play SMU, SMU doesn’t play Miami. None of them play each other. None. So there is a possibility where you have a 12-0 Miami, and an 11-1 Clemson and SMU, with their only losses coming to out-of-conference opponents. Remember, Clemson lost to Georgia, SMU lost to BYU.”

McElroy then dove into the analytics and how probable it is for Clemson (6-1 overall record), Miami (7-0) and SMU (6-1) to run the table in their respective schedules moving forward.

“Well as of this moment, Miami has a 30 percent chance to run the table. That’s the seventh best in the FBS,” McElroy said. “SMU has a 14.4 chance to run the table. That’s 16th best. So, we’re talking like pretty good, pretty decent odds relative to the rest of the college football world. And then Clemson has a 13.8 percent chance to run the table. That’s 19th best. So, you have three teams with better than 13.5 percent to run the table and finish the season 12-0 and 11-1.

“Now, I looked at the ACC tiebreakers, and I gotta be honest, they don’t make sense to me. I don’t know about y’all – tiebreaking scenarios are always hard for me to figure out. … If you can interpret it, please help me out because I don’t know. All I do is just put out the hypotheticals.”

Finally, McElroy laid out the mess he thinks the ACC could ultimately have – what he called a “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency scenario” involving the Tigers, Canes and ‘Stangs, as it relates to the 12-team College Football Playoff and who gets in or not.

Of course, the 12-team playoff will feature the five highest-ranked conference champions, plus the next seven highest-ranked teams, as determined by the CFP Selection Committee. The four highest-ranked conference champions will be seeded one through four and get first-round byes.

“The winner of the ACC gets an automatic College Football Playoff bid and a top-four seed, correct? So since they’re undefeated right now, let’s just say that’s Miami,” McElroy said. “So Miami is in the CFP at 13-0. The loser of the ACC title game gets their second loss. Let’s just say that’s Clemson, and they go from 11-1 to now 11-2. Well then you’ve got SMU sitting at home on Championship Saturday with an 11-1 record.

“Then we fast forward to Selection Day on Sunday, and SMU is picked by the Committee to be the 11 seed in the College Football Playoff. So imagine the fallout from that. Imagine the fallout, where whoever has to play in the ACC title game, they lose, and the team that they beat out by way of a tiebreaker scenario actually gets in. So the team that doesn’t play in the championship benefits from not having that second loss added.”

If that scenario were to play out, McElroy believes it’d be “potentially really catastrophic for everything involving conference championship scenarios.”

“I’m not saying SMU at 11-1 is gonna get in or Clemson at 11-1 is gonna get in. I think honestly some of those teams are going to lose probably, and the ACC might only get one team in,” McElroy said. “But if you’re looking at say, a two-loss, Ole Miss team against a one-loss SMU team, who gets the benefit of the doubt? It’s going to be interesting. Just sayin’. Keep an eye on the ACC title race. It could be very dramatic, and if you like drama, that might be the league for you.”

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