Clemson’s Path Back
By: Zach Wagner
With Clemson’s first loss of the season last weekend in South Bend, many college football fans are wondering, what’s the path back to the College Football Playoffs? After a 47-40 double-overtime loss to Notre Dame last weekend, snapping the Tiger’s 36-game regular season winning streak, the Clemson Football Team only fell three spots in the AP Poll to the number four team in the nation.
So how does the Atlantic Coast Conference standings look like?
Notre Dame sits in first in the ACC with a 7-0 record and 6-0 in its first year in the ACC. Clemson currently sits in second place with one conference loss, and tied with the Miami Hurricanes who currently sport a 6-1 conference record.
If the Fighting Irish win out the rest of their schedule, @Boston College, @UNC, Syracuse and a COVID makeup game at Wake Forest, they will see themselves heading to Charlotte for the ACC Championship Game on December 19th.
If Clemson wins out, they will also see themselves win the tie-breaker against Miami with a 42-17 win over the Hurricanes inside of Death Valley in October.
The Tigers will finish out the rest of the season after the bye week by traveling to Tallahaseee, Florida for a matchup against Florida State, Senior Day inside of Memorial Stadium against Pitt, and traveling up to Blacksburg, Virginia to finish out the season against Virginia Tech.
The College Football Playoff Committee cannot take a 10-1 Clemson team that lost to the #4 team in the nation, on the road, with a true freshman backup quarterback, and a defense that was missing half of its starters. The question will come up if the Big Ten or Pac-12 have multiple undefeated teams will the ACC get two teams in?
If a healthy Clemson team with Trevor Lawrence back defeats #2 Notre Dame in Charlotte on December 19th, there is no way that the committee will let in a team who only will play six or eight games in, over a team that has one loss in twelve games.
With the emergence of a college football season like we have ever seen, who knows what the committee will do, but if they leave Clemson out after one loss with over 50% of its defense sitting on the sideline, then what are we really doing?
Trevor Lawrence and Clemson will be back on November 21st against the Seminoles of Florida State. The game will kick off at noon and can be seen on ABC.
