Trinidad Chambliss was a magic man in the desert Thursday night, but the Miami Hurricanes were too much to handle at the end as they booked their ticket home for the national championship in a little over a week’s time.
In what will go down as one of the best games in the College Football Playoff era, the Hurricanes and Rebels had an all-out slugfest in the fourth quarter, trading leads back and forth. It was the polarizing veteran Carson Beck who put the final stamp on the game, keeping the ball to run it with 18 seconds on the clock left in the contest.
Chambliss attempted to pull off one more Houdini trick by completing two perfectly thrown deep balls to put them in a position for a last-second walkoff, but the final pass went a bit too long in the endzone. Miami won, and Mario Cristobal’s men became the first double-digit seed to ever make it to the national title game.
But with it only being the second year of the 12-team playoff, that record isn’t that impressive.
What is impressive for the Hurricanes is another piece of history they will mark when they play in their home stadium two Mondays from now.
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In the history of the BCS and the CFP, no team has ever played in the title game without ever winning the conference they currently represent.
Yes, Miami has made it to a national title game before, but it was part of the Big East back then and had won that conference. Over the past two decades the Hurricanes have been part of the ACC, they’ve never won a conference title, and didn’t even play in this season’s title game. It was the Duke Blue Devils who beat Virginia to win the ACC championship this campaign.
So there is a chance that on Jan. 19 in the College Football Playoff final, Miami wins the national championship representing the ACC without ever having won the conference.
The Hurricanes will now await the winner of Friday’s Peach Bowl as they fly home to Florida between the top-seeded Indiana Hoosiers and Oregon Ducks, both of which have won the Big Ten.
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