Miami up to No. 7 in CFP rankings ahead of clash with No. 3 Notre Dame
Unlike another Power-5 unbeaten, a measure of respect came for Miami with Tuesday's release of the second College Football Rankings on the heels of its dominant win over Virginia Tech.
The Hurricanes moved to No. 7 -- up from 10th a week ago -- but at 8-0, they still trail four one-loss schools in Notre Dame, Clemson, Oklahoma and TCU, who come in behind Nos. 1 and 2 Georgia and Alabama.
No. 17 Virginia Tech and No. 23 NC State were the only other ACC schools in the Top 25.
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"Miami was a team that the selection committee and all of us had seen a couple of their wins come in dramatic fashion, wanted to continue to watch and evaluate Miami, and we were very impressed with their performance against a solid Virginia Tech team," said CFP selection committee chair Kirby Hocutt.
That victory was enough to separate the Hurricanes from fellow unbeaten Wisconsin, with the latter still not getting much love with a 98th-ranked schedule, per NCAA.org. After the win over the Hokies, Miami's schedule is 54th.
"Consistently over the course of all of those metrics that we looked at, Wisconsin had the lowest strength of schedule amongst any of the 25 teams ranked this week," Hocutt said.
That sets the stage for a massive showdown with the third-ranked Fighting Irish on Saturday night in Coral Gables.
A Miami win would be another step toward a conference title game with Clemson where the winner is CFP-bound, spoil the Irish's CFP dreams and open the debate for two ACC teams to reach the playoff should the Hurricanes drop a close one to the Tigers for the conference title.
A Hurricanes loss, though, would put the ACC's hopes almost entirely on the Tigers.
Should Miami fall to Notre Dame, it would have difficulty getting ahead of the Irish in the final CFP rankings, even with an ACC crown. The committee would point to a head-to-head loss and the Irish's strength of schedule (second in FBS), meaning it would take further chaos hurting the Irish, SEC or Big 12's cases.
This will be the first time Notre Dame and Miami have met as ranked teams in 27 years, back when theirs was a generation-defining kind of rivalry.
The Hurricanes and Irish met in four straight seasons from 1987-90, and every year, both of them were ranked in the top 10. This weekend will rekindle that, and in the process, it figures to set the stage for how much of a margin of error the ACC has over the next month.
Follow Cory McCartney on Twitter @coryjmccartney and Facebook. His books, 'Tales from the Atlanta Braves Dugout: A Collection of the Greatest Braves Stories Ever Told,' and 'The Heisman Trophy: The Story of an American Icon and Its Winners.' are now available.
