Saturday night's primetime matchup between No. 18 Florida State and No. 3 Miami will have massive ACC title implications as well as a major impact on the College Football Playoff landscape.
The Seminoles are looking to rebound from a heartbreaking loss to then-unranked Virginia in Week 5, but the undefeated Hurricanes are one heck of an opponent to draw in that scenario. An upset would do wonders for Florida State's ACC title hopes and firmly place them back in the CFP conversation.
But what kind of damage would it do to Miami or the ACC as a whole? Not as much as you might think — and that's because Miami is already undefeated. In fact, conference officials might be secretly rooting for the Noles on Saturday night.
A Florida State upset over Miami might actually boost ACC's CFP hopes
While the ACC title race remains wide open, with teams like Louisville and Georgia Tech sitting at the top of the conference standings at the moment, a Miami loss will give the CFP selection committee much to consider if both the Canes and Florida State were to make it to the ACC title game at the end of the year. A Seminoles loss on Saturday night would remove any margin for error on their path to the Playoff, even with that season-opening win over Alabama looking better and better. A win, however, keeps every thing on the table for the conference in terms of CFP bids.
It's that exact scenario that has to happen in order for this kind of an upset to benefit the conference in the long run. Florida State would earn a resume-boosting win over a top-three team, and Miami still has breathing room to either clinch an auto-bid with one conference loss or even ride FSU's coattails like SMU did with Clemson last season.
That, of course, is contingent on Louisville and Georgia Tech losing at least twice down the stretch. But the ACC certainly doesn't want to pin its hopes for multiple Playoff bids to upstarts, especially considering that neither will have many opportunities for statement wins down the stretch. Miami will only face Louisville in Week 7 while Florida State avoids both. That's less opportunity to eliminate competition themselves and it increases the amount of scoreboard watching.
Nevertheless, the first step will come Saturday night. If Miami takes care of business then Florida State is on even thinner ice and can probably kiss the CFP goodbye barring a late-season collapse by several ACC squads.