Selection Sunday's ACC madness peaked with a hat drawing that sent Notre Dame to Sun Bowl
How are college football bowl selections and matchups decided?
For many schools and bowls, it's based on conference tie-ins. A bowl-eligible SEC school, for example, would play in one of the many bowls with ties to the SEC. Each bowl would get to select one of the bowl-eligible schools based on their position in the conference tie-in pecking order. The higher the bowl in the order, the better the pool of teams to choose from.
However, in the case of one school, the selection process was a bit more random.
According to a report from The Athletic, Notre Dame's spot in the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, where the Fighting Irish will take on Oregon State, was decided by drawing bowl names out of a hat. Literally.
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How Florida State's College Football Playoff snub affected Notre Dame
One of the major factors for the unorthodox selection method was the College Football Playoff (CFP) committee's decision to leave Florida State out of the top four in the final rankings.
Going into college football's conference championship weekend, the ACC's bowl scenarios seemed all but set. Louisville would be the conference's contractual spot holder in the Capital One Orange Bowl with a win or loss to Florida State in the ACC Championship.
A win meant they'd be in as the top team in the conference, a loss meant the Seminoles would likely get a spot in the CFP semifinal, leaving Louisville as the top ACC team outside of the CFP.
Instead, Florida State won the ACC but did not get selected as a top four team in the CFP committee's final rankings in a controversial move that put Alabama in the semifinal instead. That put the Seminoles, not the Cardinals, as a lock for a spot in the Orange Bowl.
That surprising swap alone created a domino effect down the rest of the pecking order of bowls with ACC tie-ins.
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Notre Dame bowl selection: which bowls were in the hat?
The ACC bowls in the top tier of the conference's tie-in games – the DIRECTV Holiday Bowl, TaxSlayer Gator Bowl and Pop-Tarts Bowl – made their selections, two of which had to be Louisville and N.C. State, according to the report. The Athletic also reported that one bowl official said that they were told "point blank" that Notre Dame was not an option, so the Fighting Irish remained available for the next tier of bowls.
When three bowls in the ACC's second tier of tie-ins got the opportunity to pick Notre Dame, all three had the Fighting Irish as their top choice. So, according to the conference's rules, the three bowls put their names in a hat with the ACC's attorney drawing out the winner.
Those three bowls were the Sun Bowl, the Duke's Mayo Bowl and the Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl.
When the ACC announced the Sun Bowl won the drawing, its executive director, Bernie Olivas, made the announcement at the bowl's selection party to a cheering crowd. The news was so unexpected that staff didn't have a Notre Dame helmet on hand, according to KTSM news.
Within a day, tickets were sold out.
Notre Dame previously played in the Sun Bowl in 2010, when the Fighting Irish defeated the Miami (FL) Hurricanes, 33-17.
When is the Sun Bowl? Notre Dame vs. Oregon State date, time and location
When: Friday, Dec. 29 at 2 p.m. ET
Where: Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas