Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner Jim Phillips is pushing for No. 12 Miami to earn a bid to the College Football Playoff along with the winner of the league championship game between No. 16 Virginia and Duke.

That comes with the ACC facing the chance of being squeezed out of the 12-team CFP entirely based on Tuesday’s rankings.

In an interview with AP, Phillips was emphatic in making his case for the Hurricanes and then the league’s eventual champion. That comes after the ACC had a logjam of four 6-2 teams behind the Cavaliers, triggering a tiebreaker policy that worked through multiple steps before sending the five-loss Blue Devils ahead of the Hurricanes and others for Saturday night’s title game in Charlotte.

“I have conviction and confidence in our teams, starting with Miami,” Phillips told the AP. “The second piece of that is the Virginia-Duke winner should absolutely be in this College Football Playoff.”

The Hurricanes (10-2) have closed strong as the league’s highest-ranked team in the AP Top 25 and CFP rankings, while the Cavaliers (10-2) finished as the lone 7-1 ACC team.

Duke’s inclusion, triggered by then-ranked SMU losing at Cal last weekend, represents a potential chaos agent.

Automatic CFP bids go to the five highest-ranked league champions. That theoretically accounts first for the “Power Four” champions from the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC. Then would come the highest-ranked champ from a Group of Five league: the American, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences.

In Tuesday’s CFP rankings, Miami is a bubble team for an at-large bid at No. 12 while the Cavaliers are 17th for a simple win-and-in scenario in Charlotte.

But Duke (7-5) is unranked. Meanwhile, the American has both of its title-game teams (North Texas and Tulane) in the CFP rankings, putting that winner in line for a win-and-in ticket.

ACC names Cal’s Ferrelli top defensive rookie

Cal’s redshirt freshman linebacker Luke Ferrelli was named the ACC’s Defensive Rookie of the Year, it was announced.

The San Diego native led all ACC freshmen in tackles (87) and solo tackles (36) this season. He was second among all ACC freshmen in tackles for loss (5).

Cal’s freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, meanwhile, was second behind Miami receiver Malachi Toney for the ACC Offensive Rookie of the Year award.

Ole Miss AD disputes Kiffin’s claims

Mississippi athletic director Keith Carter, members of the football team and even the state’s top public safety officer are challenging the veracity of Lane Kiffin’s portrayal of the events surrounding his departure for LSU.

“There’s been a lot of things he said publicly that I’m not sure are totally accurate,” Carter said during an appearance on a Mississippi talk show.

LSU announced the hiring of Kiffin on Sunday, two days after Mississippi defeated Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl to finish the regular season 11-1. Rebels defensive coordinator Pete Golding was named head coach shortly after Kiffin’s hiring at LSU became official.

Kiffin posted a farewell message on X saying he had hoped to coach the Rebels through the College Football Playoff and that the players wanted him to stay through the postseason. The team is No. 6 in this week’s CFP rankings, making it a near lock to receive an at-large bid.

“My request to do so was denied by Keith Carter despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance,” Kiffin wrote.

Kiffin had said he was under the impression he would be able to coach the Rebels in the CFP until he was told otherwise in a meeting early Sunday, according to Yahoo Sports.

Carter said Kiffin and his representatives had been told several weeks ago that he would not coach in the playoff if he was not staying at Mississippi.

As for the players asking him to stay through the playoff, offensive lineman Brycen Sanders wrote on X: “I think everyone that was in that room would disagree.”

Cal Poly hires ex-UCLA coach Skipper

Tim Skipper, the veteran assistant who served as UCLA’s interim football coach for the final nine games of the current season, has been hired as the new head coach at Cal Poly.