Another season over, another round of grumblings or elation about postseason destinations. Let's break down how the ACC teams got selected for their bowls.
I went over a lot of the basic process about the bowl selection and tiers last year. This year, the ACC had an extra bowl near the top in the form of the Citrus Bowl. Simply, whenever the Big Ten is selected for the Orange Bowl, the ACC gets their spot in the Citrus Bowl, which slots in between the New Year's Six and Russell Athletic Bowl.
This year's selection:
-College Football Playoff
-Orange Bowl
-New Year's Six
-Citrus Bowl
-Russell Athletic Bowl
-Tier 1: Taxslayer Bowl*, Belk Bowl, Pinstripe Bowl, Sun Bowl
-Military Bowl
-Independence Bowl
-Quick Lane Bowl
*The Taxslayer (formerly Gator) Bowl shares their pick with the Music City Bowl. But since the Music City Bowl had chosen an ACC team the last two years, Taxslayer got preference.
The ACC had 11 bowl eligible teams:
12-1 Clemson
9-4 Virginia Tech
9-3 Louisville and FSU
8-4 UNC, Miami, Pitt, and Georgia Tech
6-6 Wake Forest, NC State, and Boston College
(Remember, the ACC has a rule where a bowl can only take a team within one win of the highest available team.)
Clemson earned a bid in the CFP, going to the Fiesta Bowl. This opened up the Orange Bowl to the highest ranked ACC team, which the committee said was FSU. No other ACC team was selected for an at-large spot in the New Year's Six.
Now, the ACC had an interesting situation here with their first two bowls after the NY6. The Citrus and Russell Athletic Bowls are both played in the same location (Orlando) and run by the same organization. They had indicated that VT being in the ACC Championship game in that same location would not affect their selection process, meaning they didn't care if VT had back to back games in Orlando.
The Citrus Bowl had first choice. They could choose between any of the 8 or 9 win teams. They chose Louisville to play against LSU. Likely, their decision was motivated by Louisville's QB being the likely Heisman winner.
Next, the Russell Athletic Bowl had their selection. The highest available team was 9-4 VT, but they could also select an 8 win team. The other tie-in that the bowl had was the third selection from the Big 12, behind the Sugar Bowl and the Alamo Bowl. After Oklahoma was placed in the Sugar Bowl, the next two teams available were West Virginia (10-2) and Oklahoma State (9-3). The Alamo Bowl chose Oklahoma State, most likely motivated by geography. That left WVU to the Russell Athletic Bowl. (The next available team in the Big 12 was 8-4 Kansas State, likely too far back to successfully jump WVU.) Since the RAB was locked into WVU for the Big 12 side, VT was not a desirable option, since those two teams open their season against each other next year. None of the parties involved wanted to schedule two matches essentially back-to-back. So, the Russell Athletic Bowl dipped into the 8-4 pool and selected Miami.
Now, the Tier 1 bowls did not have a lot of controversy this year. Since there were no 7 win teams, the 6-6 teams were unable to jump up at all, and were all guaranteed to go to tier 2 bowls. At this point, it was a matter of the four bowls selecting between VT, UNC, Pitt, and Georgia Tech.
Some VT fans are a little confused about being selected for the Belk Bowl at 9-4, when they were flirting with a 6-6 VT last year. The context to remember is that last year was Frank Beamer's final game, and the geographical proximity for that would have been a huge boost for tickets. However, the standings in the ACC last year were spread out differently, and since no one wanted Pitt at 8-4, VT could not be selected in a Tier 1 bowl.
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