CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) \u2014 SMU coach Rhett Lashlee went out of his way Friday to congratulate Duke on winning the 2025 Atlantic Coast Conference championship, adding that the Blue Devils should have made the College Football Playoff over Sun Belt champion James Madison.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we all know they should have easily been in the playoff,\u201d Lashlee said. \u201cWhen you win the ACC, the way they did and who they beat, they should have been in instead of a team from the Sun Belt. But hopefully things get learned and that doesn\u2019t happen again. We should have been a two-bid league.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duke beat No. 20 Virginia 27-20 in overtime<\/a> for the ACC title last December after winning a five-team tiebreaker to qualify.<\/p>\n The ACC spent the week leading up to the title game<\/a> campaigning for then-No. 10 ranked Miami to get into the playoffs by virtue of a head-to-head win against Notre Dame, along with Duke-Virginia winner.<\/p>\n Miami and JMU got in; Duke and Notre Dame did not.<\/p>\n Duke was the only Power Four champion to miss the 12-team playoff, something that still irks Blue Devils coach Manny Diaz eight months later.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re all here because 17 teams are entering into a competition to determine who this champion is,\u201d Diaz said at the ACC Kickoff in Charlotte, North Carolina. \u201cIn my mind, whoever wins that competition should always be in the College Football Playoff. And by the rules that everyone agreed to … we won the competition. So therefore, we should have gone to the playoff.\u201d<\/p>\n ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips announced this week the league is changing its tiebreaker format<\/a> by using the SportSource Analytics metric. Under the new format, Miami would have won the 2025 tiebreaker and played in the ACC title game over Duke.<\/p>\n Diaz said that doesn\u2019t really matter when it comes to last season.<\/p>\n \u201cThe story shouldn\u2019t be about the tiebreaker creating more deserving teams. The story should have been that last year the ACC deserved to have Duke and Miami in,\u201d Diaz said. \u201cIt\u2019s a respect thing for our league.\u201d<\/p>\n Diaz said the problem still comes down to what he called \u201ca fashion show or a beauty pageant.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t like tiebreakers that still use the beauty pageant,\u201d Diaz said. \u201cWe absolutely deserved to be there because of all the teams that won six games \u2014 and we weren\u2019t great at everything last year \u2014 but one thing we were pretty good at was winning ACC games. And we won six, and everyone else that won six didn\u2019t play as good of teams as we did.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) \u2014 SMU coach Rhett Lashlee went out of his way Friday to congratulate Duke on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6495,1443,331,339,7643,13983,4432,380,7,4645,629,944,35854,21207,47153,993,44010,8173,7502,216,2972,10607,22221,49,48,1917,941,6370,5763,5991,12223,1686,27334,14331,9,51,5557,2084,4718,14333],"class_list":["post-948614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-atlantic-coast-conference","tag-california","tag-college-football","tag-college-sports","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-duke-blue-devils-football","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-football","tag-ga-state-wire","tag-georgia","tag-james-madison","tag-james-madison-dukes-football","tag-james-madison-dukes","tag-jim-phillips","tag-kentucky","tag-ky-state-wire","tag-manny-diaz","tag-massachusetts","tag-miami","tag-miami-hurricanes","tag-miami-hurricanes-football","tag-nc-state-wire","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-new-york","tag-north-carolina","tag-pa-state-wire","tag-pennsylvania","tag-rhett-lashlee","tag-sc-state-wire","tag-south-carolina","tag-southern-methodist-mustangs","tag-southern-methodist-mustangs-football","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-virginia","tag-virginia-cavaliers","tag-virginia-cavaliers-football"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}