When the latest College Football Playoff rankings were released for Week 14, the committee declined to name a No. 11 and No. 12 seed for the first time all season due to the implications of the ACC title game. A potentially unranked Duke Blue Devils – with five losses – could win the ACC over the 10-2 Virginia Cavaliers. That sent college football into a frenzy of who deserves to be in the CFP. Per ESPN, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips not only thinks that winner belongs in the playoff, but also No. 12 Miami Hurricanes who would be left out in favor of the two conference champions in the final seeding.

A mess of five 6-2 teams in the conference behind the Cavaliers triggered a confusing multistep tiebreaker that sent the 7-5 Blue Devils to the title game after the previously ranked SMU Mustangs lost at California. Now the potential for chaos is grand. It’s all but assumed – and really purported by the ESPN conversations – that the top Power Four champions plus one Group of Five champion will get a spot. That’s not the rules. It’s the five highest-ranked champions from the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC, the American, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences.

Here is the full story from Miami Roundtable writer Shandel Richardson on the commissioner's comments and the Hurricanes' potential case.

Miami Hurricanes Receive Backing From ACC Regarding College Football Playoff ACC commissioner Jim Phillips defends the conference in terms of College Football Playoff berths

It's simple if Virginia wins – they’re in and are ranked No. 17 ahead of the other potential conference champions – the No. 20 Tulane Green Wave, No. 24 North Texas Mean Green, and No. 25 James Madison Dukes. But Duke isn’t ranked. What happens if they win?

Phillips thinks it shouldn’t matter.

"I have conviction and confidence in our teams, starting with Miami," Phillips told the AP. "The second piece of that is the Virginia-Duke winner should absolutely be in this College Football Playoff."

But why? Just because they’re a Power Four conference? They have an unranked five loss team playing for a title. One that lost to a potential American champ – the Green Wave. Meanwhile, that title game has two ranked opponents that are both 7-1 in conference play. The Mean Green are 11-1 and Tulane is 10-2 with two wins over Power Four opponents.

Should Duke win, does that make the James Madison Dukes viable? They only have one loss, to ACC member Louisville – who also beat the Miami Hurricanes.

There’s frankly, more of a case for the Hurricanes to make a play. For one, they have a literal head-to-head win over the No. 9 ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish. And the committee directly pointed to direct head-to-head wins in their seeding conversation Tuesday night. Moreover, both the Hurricanes and Fighting Irish are 10-2, and are comparable in ESPN’s strength-of-schedule metrics.

They also have two common wins, bowl-eligible NC State and Pittsburgh. Miami beat them by a combined 65 points compared to a 51-point margin for Notre Dame. The eye test doesn’t really check out with the committee’s reasoning. However, tiebreakers are always going to favor one team and leave another feeling like their dreams were stolen. The simple way to eliminate that is to not drop two conference games. Every team in conversation for the ACC title game did just that.

While the expansion of the College Football Playoff was meant to allow more teams a shot at the title, it feels like it’s made every conference feel greedier and automatically deserving of more than one slot. It’s hard to reconcile the discourse of a 12-team format when previously, only four teams had a ticket to the dance.