Tulane took care of business in the American Conference championship game on Friday night. After forcing five North Texas turnovers, the Green Wave sealed a 34-21 win and a spot in the CFP field as the highest ranked G5 team. While James Madison’s fate will be determined by the ACC title game, for now, at least one G5 team is in and now the question becomes who will they play?
Jon Sumrall will be coaching his final season at Tulane and after their season is over is headed to Florida. Until then, he’ll have the task of turning Tulane into the Group of 5 darlings. This year, they went 2-1 against P4 teams, beating Duke and Northwestern before getting pummeled by Ole Miss. It’s not out of the question to think there could be a rematch either.
Here’s what two projected College Football Playoff brackets – depending on how the ACC title game goes – following Tulane’s win and a look at what their seed and potential matchups would be.
Projected CFP field following Tulane’s American Conference title win
IF DUKE WINS ACC TITLE | IF VIRGINIA WINS ACC TITLE |
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Tulane seed, matchup if Duke beats No. 17 Virginia
The chaos of the ACC ultimately leaves the conference out, meaning Duke pulls off the upset over No. 17 ranked Virginia and James Madison gets in as the next highest ranked conference champion. With it, Tulane would get the No. 11 seed thanks to being the higher ranked conference champion after Ohio State, Georgia and Texas Tech.
As far as the rest of the field, assuming Indiana loses to Ohio State, they’d still get one of the first-round byes, but fall to the No. 4 seed. Everything else remains unchanged, minus Georgia and Texas Tech both moving up one spot.
Based on this projected field, Tulane gets its rematch against Ole Miss. This would be interesting for a couple of reasons. For one, Sumrall is on his way out and Ole Miss named Pete Golding the new coach in the wake of Lane Kiffin’s move to LSU.
Tulane seed, matchup if No. 17 Virginia saves ACC’s dignity
Everybody is counting Virginia out, but if they do beat Duke for the second time this year and win the ACC title game, they would be the fourth-highest ranked conference champion, meaning Tulane would get the No. 12 seed and the Cavaliers would get the No. 11 seed. That means Tulane would end up playing Oregon in this case.
In both cases, I think the top 10 teams are unchanged, obviously the seeding would be different based on the results on Saturday. The good thing for Tulane is they’re, they just don’t quite know who they’re playing yet.