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As for Notre Dame, an official with one of the involved bowls said his bowl was told “point blank” by the conference that the Irish were “not available” to its pool. The source was not pleased at “being told who the teams were” and believed the process ran contrary to the contracts.
An ACC official said Notre Dame was “eligible for selection, but under the selection guidelines, their selection by one of those bowls was not guaranteed.”
While other bowl announcements began trickling out across social media as early as mid-afternoon, the ACC’s remained notably missing. That’s because the group’s normally brief selection call lasted nearly 90 minutes. NC State had been to San Diego in 2021, too recently to return. The same applied with Clemson in Orlando. And the SEC, which largely dictates which of its teams go where, already had placed Kentucky in the Gator Bowl, ruling out Louisville. Thus, the Pop-Tarts got the Wolfpack (to face Kansas State), the Gator got Clemson and the Cardinals landed in San Diego against USC.
“(FSU’s snub) was unfortunate for college football,” Neville said, “but for us, it worked out that we got the No. 15 team in the country coming out here.”
The prolonged process delayed selections for the conference’s next tier of bowls — the Duke’s Mayo, Pinstripe and Sun bowls. Olivas, the longtime director of El Paso’s 88-year-old bowl game, nervously shuttled back and forth between the bowl’s “war room” and a party the bowl was hosting for 300 guests.
Finally, he got a text that it was time to log onto a Zoom call, at which point Strickland informed the bowl of the remaining teams it could choose from. They included UNC, Miami … and Notre Dame.
“We were shocked,” said Olivas, who had locked in Oregon State on the Pac-12 side. “In our weekly meetings with our football committee and our board of directors, Notre Dame never came up. We had no idea what happened above us.”
Unsurprisingly, all three bowls submitted the Irish as their top choice. Per the ACC official, the league then followed its prescribed process, leading to … its attorney writing each bowl’s name on a piece of paper and drawing it out of a hat.
“He twirled them around, twirled them around, and Michael Strickland read the name — Sun Bowl,” Olivas said.
Olivas then went to announce it at the party. Only one problem: No one had thought to include Notre Dame, which last played at the bowl in 2010, among the row of helmets displayed on the table in front of him. Standing next to Tony the Tiger on one side and the Sun Court “Lady in Waiting” on the other, Olivas raised his arms like an Olympian who just won the gold, and the crowd erupted.
The SUN BOWL sold out within 24 hours.
After the Pinstripe Bowl landed Miami and North Carolina got the home-state Mayo Bowl, most of the remaining dominoes fell to ESPN Events, which owns and operates 17 bowls and absorbs some of the conferences’ surplus teams. That’s how Syracuse landed seemingly randomly in the Boca Raton Bowl, perhaps for all the Central New York retirees there. At one point, it was reported that Duke would play UCF in the Gasparilla Bowl before someone noticed the teams had just faced each other in last season’s Military Bowl. Georgia Tech swapped places with the Blue Devils.
The 41st and final bowl announcement of the day — Duke versus Troy in the Birmingham Bowl — came shortly before 7 p.m. ET, nearly seven hours after the FSU bombshell that ricocheted from the ESPN set in Bristol, Conn., to the Bronx, to Orlando, to El Paso, to San Diego and many points in between.
“We’ve been doing this since 2019,” Morrison said. “We’ve had something pop up unexpectedly every year, but I would say this one had a lot more pop-ups.”
— The Athletic’s Scott Dochterman contributed to this report.
Link
https://theathletic.com/5112770/2023/12/05/florida-state-playoff-snub-acc-bowl-games
An ACC official said Notre Dame was “eligible for selection, but under the selection guidelines, their selection by one of those bowls was not guaranteed.”
While other bowl announcements began trickling out across social media as early as mid-afternoon, the ACC’s remained notably missing. That’s because the group’s normally brief selection call lasted nearly 90 minutes. NC State had been to San Diego in 2021, too recently to return. The same applied with Clemson in Orlando. And the SEC, which largely dictates which of its teams go where, already had placed Kentucky in the Gator Bowl, ruling out Louisville. Thus, the Pop-Tarts got the Wolfpack (to face Kansas State), the Gator got Clemson and the Cardinals landed in San Diego against USC.
“(FSU’s snub) was unfortunate for college football,” Neville said, “but for us, it worked out that we got the No. 15 team in the country coming out here.”
The prolonged process delayed selections for the conference’s next tier of bowls — the Duke’s Mayo, Pinstripe and Sun bowls. Olivas, the longtime director of El Paso’s 88-year-old bowl game, nervously shuttled back and forth between the bowl’s “war room” and a party the bowl was hosting for 300 guests.
Finally, he got a text that it was time to log onto a Zoom call, at which point Strickland informed the bowl of the remaining teams it could choose from. They included UNC, Miami … and Notre Dame.
“We were shocked,” said Olivas, who had locked in Oregon State on the Pac-12 side. “In our weekly meetings with our football committee and our board of directors, Notre Dame never came up. We had no idea what happened above us.”
Unsurprisingly, all three bowls submitted the Irish as their top choice. Per the ACC official, the league then followed its prescribed process, leading to … its attorney writing each bowl’s name on a piece of paper and drawing it out of a hat.
“He twirled them around, twirled them around, and Michael Strickland read the name — Sun Bowl,” Olivas said.
Olivas then went to announce it at the party. Only one problem: No one had thought to include Notre Dame, which last played at the bowl in 2010, among the row of helmets displayed on the table in front of him. Standing next to Tony the Tiger on one side and the Sun Court “Lady in Waiting” on the other, Olivas raised his arms like an Olympian who just won the gold, and the crowd erupted.
The SUN BOWL sold out within 24 hours.
After the Pinstripe Bowl landed Miami and North Carolina got the home-state Mayo Bowl, most of the remaining dominoes fell to ESPN Events, which owns and operates 17 bowls and absorbs some of the conferences’ surplus teams. That’s how Syracuse landed seemingly randomly in the Boca Raton Bowl, perhaps for all the Central New York retirees there. At one point, it was reported that Duke would play UCF in the Gasparilla Bowl before someone noticed the teams had just faced each other in last season’s Military Bowl. Georgia Tech swapped places with the Blue Devils.
The 41st and final bowl announcement of the day — Duke versus Troy in the Birmingham Bowl — came shortly before 7 p.m. ET, nearly seven hours after the FSU bombshell that ricocheted from the ESPN set in Bristol, Conn., to the Bronx, to Orlando, to El Paso, to San Diego and many points in between.
“We’ve been doing this since 2019,” Morrison said. “We’ve had something pop up unexpectedly every year, but I would say this one had a lot more pop-ups.”
— The Athletic’s Scott Dochterman contributed to this report.
Link
https://theathletic.com/5112770/2023/12/05/florida-state-playoff-snub-acc-bowl-games
