Clemson, again: The Tigers won a thriller to make the CFP. But SMU deserves a spot, too
After all of the ACC’s twists and whirls throughout this 17-team football season, the end result looked very familiar Saturday night after the best championship game the league has witnessed.
A week after being all but left for dead, Clemson won its way into the College Football Playoff just before midnight in Charlotte. The victory came on a remarkable 56-yard walk-off field goal by freshman Nolan Hauser — a Charlotte-area kid from Hough High in Cornelius who made the biggest kick of his life on the biggest stage he’s ever seen.
Hauser’s field goal earned Clemson a 34-31 win on the last play of regulation and propelled the Tigers into the College Football Playoff (the 12-team field will be announced at noon on Sunday). And if you saw the second half of the ACC championship, played before 53,808 shivering fans and a national TV audience, you know darn well that SMU should be in the 12-team CFP, too.
“It’d be criminal if we’re not in,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said after the game ended. “It’d be wrong on so many levels.”
But Clemson was even better in the final, sweet 16 seconds.
“What an amazing, amazing college football game,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said.
By the final 16 seconds, SMU had tied the game at 31-all on a touchdown after trailing, 31-14, when the fourth quarter began. Clemson was on the verge of a historic collapse. SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings (four total TDs) had been the best player on the field for large swaths of the game. The Mustangs’ pony mascot had run all over the Bank of America Stadium field. With only 16 seconds to go at kickoff, overtime seemed imminent.
But then, in those last 16 seconds, Clemson put together a 41-yard kickoff return by Adam Randall, a 17-yard dart from Cade Klubnik to Antonio Williams and Hauser’s field-goal blast. It was nutty stuff to end a nutty game, punctuated by a Hauser kick that looked like it came off the leg of a future NFL kicker (which it probably did) and would have been good from 60.
Although technically a walk-off field goal for the win, Hauser’s 56-yarder was really a runoff. The Clemson sideline exploded when Hauser made the kick, with Coach Swinney leading the way on a Jim Valvano-esque full sprint to the middle of the field. There was really no walking at that point — everyone in the stands was either screaming in ecstasy or yelling in agony, and the field was full of players running around or dropping to the ground in disbelief. Clemson fans weren’t cold anymore, that’s for sure.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Klubnik, who had already begun visualizing how he wanted overtime to go but then never had to play it. “I just couldn’t believe it.”
The Mustangs had won the ACC regular season by going 8-0 in their very first season in the league. They were a great story. But Clemson, the league’s old guard, scored 21 first-quarter points as Klubnik threw three touchdown passes in his first six attempts. By the end of the first quarter, it was 21-7, Clemson.
But after that, SMU outplayed the Tigers, only to be undone by Hauser’s field goal that gave Clemson its eighth ACC title in the past 10 years.
For the Tigers, who have had trouble with blocked kicks for much of the season, it was an unlikely way to win a game — although Hauser was an extraordinary kicker in high school, having set a national record for most field goals (66) at Hough High.
The Tigers will learn their opponent and seeding when the 12-team CFP is unveiled on Sunday. The most likely scenario is probably a No. 12 seed, which means Clemson would go on the road to play a team like Texas or Notre Dame on Dec. 20 or 21. It’s also somewhat possible that Clemson could grab the No. 4 seed, which would give the Tigers a first-round bye.
SMU, meanwhile, will have to sweat it out. The Mustangs rightfully should be in — the ACC is a good enough football league in 2024 to have two teams in the newly expanded 12-team playoff system.
But it’s conceivable that SMU will be dropped out of the field entirely by the selection committee in favor of Alabama, which would mean only Clemson makes it out of the ACC. In that scenario, SMU would have actually been penalized for playing in its conference championship game, which is not only incorrect but could also have future nationwide repercussions.
In any event, Clemson is in, and the Tigers should be sending a big Christmas gift to Syracuse. Clemson wouldn’t have even been in this ACC title game except for the fact that Syracuse upset Miami on the final day of the regular season, only hours after the Tigers suffered a crushing home loss to South Carolina. Klubnik had sat in his car for nearly an hour after the South Carolina game. “Pretty much crying,” he said.
And now Clemson is in the CFP instead.
As for Swinney: The ACC has now had 20 football title games. Swinney has coached in exactly half of them. And Swinney has gone 9-1 in those, losing the first and going 9-0 since then.
After it was over, Swinney proclaimed of SMU: “That’s a playoff team.”
As unlikely as it seemed a week ago, Clemson is too.
