You don't expect the Blanche Dubois of the ACC to defy you.
Wouldn't it be in the interest of the ACC to find a reason to kill off the conference championship this year in the interest of safety? Unnecessary travel for limited to no financial gain, and the teams have also battled each other hard already.
People would see it as an attempt to get two teams in the playoff. I don't think anybody would be fooled.
Pitt is playing pretty well, and Clemson has had a lot of off-field drama of late. While it's unlikely they'll lose, I wouldn't be shocked to see Pitt make a game out of it.
I know it is paywalled, but here are a couple points made if you don't have access:
Title: Staples: No Dabo, Florida State is not ducking you and your team
Gist:
1. Dabo is actually trying to avoid playing FSU on 12/12 (just as was stated here)
2. If ND takes care of business, they also should NOT need to play Wake on 12/12 if Clemson is off that week. It would be tough for the ACC to justify making ND play but not Clemson and ND has a right to raise and push that issue.
ND had to play by the same rules as everyone else? Or, in many cases, when has it wanted to?
If Wake wants to play us — whether for the money or the TV exposure or just because their guys really want to say they played this awesome team — I don’t see how ND can say no.
If Wake is like, “oh um well December 12 is awfully close to Christmas and all“ ... K, bye! Happy Holidays, see ya around!
...if Clemson doesn't have to play Florida State the Saturday before the championship game.
Kelly seems to do a lot better in big regular season games than bowl games, which may support the thesis that extra time seems to help our opponents more than it helps us.
Top 2 teams by winning percentage make the ACC champ game. Or they can just skip it and play in the final four.
From the ACC tie breaking rules:
"Furthermore, in the event there is an unequal total number of conference games played among teams tied in the loss column, head-to-head results will take precedence over win-percentage."
So if Clemson plays fewer games that Miami and both have 1 loss, Clemson still gets in.
Clemson played by ACC rules and FSU opted out of the game (as they were permitted to do by the ACC). I don’t think Clemson should have to pay for another trip after FSU turned down the game. If FSU doesn’t want to travel to Clemson (or pay for Clemson’s trip to FSU) the game should be cancelled. This isn’t at all analogous to our situation with Wake. We should play Wake if we’re both healthy enough to play.
ACC for allowing FSU to make its own decision. He is very worried that the ACC will make him play FSU on December 12, so he is preemptively establishing Clemson as the victim in the court of public opinion.
And if Clemson is not forced to play, but Wake wants to play ND, no way will ND get its own week off before the ACCC.
All of this discussion is of course moot if ND does not take care of business and win out. UNC wants this one bad.
Win out, play and beat Wake Forest Dec. 12, and beat Clemson again on Dec. 19. I'd love to play by Dabo's own ridiculous rules and kick his ass anyway. What a clown.
There's absolutely a 100 percent chance this is really about wanting that Dec. 12 bye week. Dabo is a complete damn fraud, but he's never this ridiculous about it - a clear tell that the underlying issue is the real one.
He has an .810 win percentage as a head coach and has won two national titles.
Call him a manipulative, whining, ref-intimidating loudmouth, but "complete fraud" is a stretch.
He's obviously a fantastic football coach.
I came to that same conclusion after he responded when his lineman tested positive for those PEDs before we played them in the CFB playoff semi-final. Two parts of his explanation really smelled rotten to me, "that PED is in everything" and "we are going to get to the bottom of this."
Here's the first fraudulent part: if that PED is in everything, then how come only your lineman failed the test? Not the rest of your players or anyone from ND that took the same tests.
Also, the logical thing to do if you really want to get to the bottom of it is administer other tests to see who else fails, so then you can figure out what is unique about that group. At one point he hinted that it may have been in a specific hot tub the lineman used. A reporter asked Dabo about that sometime after the game. Dabo said they were not going to do any additional testing.
Seems obvious to me that Dabo was using his dad-gummit Bobby Bowden good-ole-boy speak to manipulate public perception.
As was pointed out earlier, a real trap game.