DALLAS — Despite winning the AAC Championship on Saturday, its first conference championship in nearly 40 years, SMU was excluded from playing in one of the New Year bowl games, a decision the AAC commissioner said the conference was "stunned and disappointed" by.
SMU beat the higher-ranked Tulane in the conference championship game in New Orleans with a final score of 26-14. This was Tulane's first loss after an 11-game win streak.
"SMU was the only FBS team to beat a CFP-ranked opponent on the road in a conference championship game," AAC Commissioner Mike Aresco said in a statement on Twitter. "It is especially disappointing to see that the committee appears to have applied different standards in SMU's case than they did with the selection of the top four teams."
Aresco claimed there was a double standard with the AAC at work in his comments, saying the conference had multiple strong, undefeated teams with tough schedules over the past decade, yet that were often ranked behind teams with two or three losses based on how the committee assessed teams' strength of schedule.
"Apparently, that same assessment did not apply in this case when it was clearly warranted," Aresco concluded. "This is beyond disappointing."
Read Aresco's full statement here:
The four teams which did make the playoff are No. 1 Michigan, No. 2 Washington, No. 3 Texas and No. 4 Alabama. Also excluded from the playoff was Florida State, who became the first unbeaten Power Five conference champion excluded from the playoff.
The playoff field is selected by the 13 members of the College Football Playoff selection committee, who consider multiple criteria to determine the four teams. A full list of the committee members can be found here.
