Coastal Carolina ranked No. 20 in first CFP ranking. What’s the Chants’ path to major bowl?
Coastal Carolina is No. 20 in the initial College Football Playoff rankings announced Tuesday night.
Just what does that mean for the Chanticleers?
It means they are in the running for a major bowl and a major payday, but they’ll need some help.
The big prize for all teams from the Group of Five conferences, which Coastal is a part of as a member of the Sun Belt Conference, is a berth in a New Year’s Six bowl game. G5 schools are guaranteed one bowl spot in the New Year’s Six, awarded to the highest-ranked conference champion from the Sun Belt, American Athletic, Mountain West, Mid-American and Conference USA.
New Year’s Six bowls include the national semifinal games — which this season are the Rose and Sugar bowls — as well as the Orange, Cotton, Peach and Fiesta bowls. Because the Orange is contracted with the ACC, Big Ten and SEC, a G5 team will play in one of the other three bowls if it isn’t selected for the semifinals.
Coastal (8-0) will need to win out through the Sun Belt championship game and get some help with losses by No. 7 Cincinnati (8-0) and possibly No. 21 Marshall (7-0) — seemingly the only other teams in serious contention to be one of the 12 teams in the CFP bowls.
“I’m realistic on the playoffs and the New Year’s Six, I’m pretty realistic there that our shot is slim to none and slim probably left the building already,” CCU head coach Jamey Chadwell said Monday, prior to the release of the CFP rankings. “We’re going to focus on these things we can control and that’s what helped us to get to this point. We want to qualify for the Sun Belt championship and for us to do that we have to win this upcoming weekend. If we can do that then there’s at least an opportunity to maybe talk about something beyond that, but not until then.”
No. 14 BYU (9-0) is not a member of a Power Five conference and it can be selected for a New Year’s Six bowl, but as an independent it cannot bump a G5 team from a CFP bowl berth, Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff, told The Sun News.
Why is a New Year’s Six berth important?
In addition to the added prestige and television exposure, it’s worth a ton of money.
Each conference with a team in a CFP bowl receives $4 million per team, plus an additional $2.43 million to cover expenses for the game. CCU Director of Athletics Matt Hogue said the team representing the Sun Belt in a game would receive “the lion’s share” of the conference distribution.
The Sun Belt has a number of bowl affiliations and the contracts are new this year, but last season the largest payout to a team in a Sun Belt-affiliated bowl was $750,000 per team; the difference for CCU would be astronomical.
If Cincinnati finishes in the top four of the final CFP ranking, which is scheduled to be announced on Dec. 20 — one day after the Sun Belt championship game — that will account for the G5 New Year’s Six automatic berth, but it wouldn’t exclude the CFP Selection Committee from selecting or placing a G5 team in the top 12 for one of the six games.
The guaranteed spots go to champions from the five Power Five conferences and the highest ranked G5 champ.
During the College Football Playoff era (since 2014), only eight of the 72 teams selected to play in a New Year’s Six game have been ranked below 12th.
The Chants have remaining conference games they should win against Texas State (2-9, 2-5 Sun Belt) and Troy (4-4, 2-2) sandwiched around a home game next Saturday against Liberty (8-1), which was an AP Top 25 team before a one-point loss on Saturday at N.C. State.
“It’s in the back of our head, but looking forward to the championship game or like the New Year’s Six bowl, that overlooks teams we still have to play to get into those type games,” CCU junior tight end Isaiah Likely said Sunday. “So we’re still going to take one championship game at a time knowing that next week we’ve still got to be 1-0.”
The Chants will need to win the conference championship and will undoubtedly need to remain unbeaten to have any shot at a New Year’s Six bowl, and they will win the East Division and host the conference championship game at Brooks Stadium with a win Saturday at Texas State.
In this coronavirus-altered season, the Sun Belt will hold its title game on the home field of one of the division winners rather than a neutral site. The host will be based on winning percentage within the conference, and will revert to head-to-head competition as a tiebreaker, and CCU has beaten West Division champion Louisiana (7-1), which is ranked 23rd in the AP Top 25 Poll.
The Chants nearly got their wish Saturday, when Cincinnati came back from a double-digit deficit in the first half and three-point deficit late in the third quarter to defeat Central Florida.
The Bearcats have Temple (1-6 overall and in conference) and No. 25 Tulsa (5-1, 5-0 American Athletic) remaining on the schedule, then will host the AAC championship game if they remain in first place, most likely against the Golden Hurricane, though SMU, Houston, Memphis and Navy all have two conference losses and are in the mix with two or three games remaining.
Marshall (7-0) has up to four games remaining against weak competition in Rice (1-2), Florida International (0-5), Charlotte (2-3) and East Carolina (2-6). The latter two teams were previously postponed and the ECU matchup is a candidate for a cancellation as a non-conference game.
Marshall is then likely to play the Conference USA West Division champion in the league’s title game at home on Dec. 18. Texas-San Antonio (6-4, 4-2 in conference), Alabama-Birmingham (4-3, 2-1) and Louisiana Tech (4-3, 3-2) are the favorites to win the West.
This story was originally published November 24, 2020 at 7:53 PM.
