Karma hits you in strange ways. Sometimes it hits like a hammer, sometimes like a creeping fog. And sometimes karma shows up on a mustang.

SMU is one of the best teams in the ACC this season, a legitimate conference championship and playoff contender despite the fact that the Mustangs receive none of the ACC’s television riches. It’s pretty funny, but when you factor in another element — the sad face of Florida State in 2024 — well, it elevates SMU’s season to the level of art.

The Mustangs are 5-0 in the ACC, 8-1 overall, leading the conference and in excellent position to challenge for a first-round bye in the College Football Playoffs. Florida State, meanwhile, is 1-7 in the conference and 1-9 overall, a failure so catastrophic that it will leave scars on this program for years to come.

Yes, the irony is thick here; Florida State is in the middle of a lawsuit against the ACC over what the school says is an unfair distribution of media rights revenue. The lawsuit is widely seen as a pretext to allow FSU to leave the ACC, which is bound by a television deal through 2036, for richer pastures.

Meanwhile, SMU will not accept any TV revenue from the ACC for nine years, the price necessary to join the conference. This turns out to be great exposure for SMU, and a heck of a deal for the ACC – at least the bully who’s kicking everyone’s butt isn’t taking their lunch money. Again.

So let’s do what the rest of the ACC did and leave Florida State behind. How legitimate is SMU as a candidate? The AP and CFP rankings put the Mustangs at 14th and behind Miami, despite the fact that SMU lost to Big 12 leader BYU and Miami lost to unranked Georgia Tech.

The difference in rankings is largely due to the disparity between the two at the start of the season, and soon, that won’t matter; If Miami and SMU win, they will meet in December in the ACC Championship with an almost certain bye to the CFP first-round playoffs. The question beyond that is, would the ACC runner-up secure a playoff spot with two losses?

The answer: Probably not. The reason: Ole Miss, which fell from 16th in last week’s rankings to 11th this week, just ahead of SMU. Apparently, big wins play an important role in the CFP committee’s thinking, and SMU doesn’t have any big wins left outside of the ACC Championship. The Mustangs close with Boston College (5-4, 2-3 conference), Virginia (5-4, 3-3) and Cal (5-4, 1-4) – wonderful schools, all of them, but not what you need when you’re looking for football legitimacy.

The problem facing SMU and Miami is – more ironically – exactly what Florida State is complaining about, in part: the ACC as a conference is so weak that a standard conference schedule doesn’t provide enough of meat for a higher-level compelling case. rankings. It also hurts their cause: Miami and SMU managed to avoid facing Clemson, the only other ACC team with any national clout.

In fact, even this far into the season, Miami and SMU only have three common opponents – stupid expanded conferences – and they are both 3-0 against those opponents. Both teams beat Louisville by a touchdown and beat FSU. SMU needed overtime to beat Duke, while Miami easily handled the Blue Devils. Cal still waiting on SMU’s roster; Miami scored a memorable victory against #Calgorithm earlier this season.

CFP Committee Chairman Warde Manuel addressed the question of SMU or Miami when announcing the rankings, saying the committee’s “feeling was that Miami was ahead of SMU in terms of performance this year.”

In terms of numbers, Manuel is probably right; Miami averages nearly 100 more yards of offense and five points per game than SMU. In terms of recording? Uh. This is where it gets murky, and beauty pageants don’t usually select muddy contestants.

Don’t expect SMU to adhere to PCP logic. “Looking at our league and saying, ‘Well, maybe we’re a one-bid league,’ but you look at another league that we have a winning record against and saying, ‘Oh, they’re going to get four,’ “It doesn’t make sense to me,” SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee told the media Tuesday. “Make sense of it.”

The ACC leads the Big Ten 3-2 this season, and although the conference is 2-5 against the SEC, four ACC-SEC rivalry games remain.

You can debate the committee’s judgment – again, who would you rather see on the field, BYU or Georgia Tech? – but fortunately for SMU, the best possible remedy awaits at the end of the season.

“We just have to win,” Lashlee added. “I’m not going to complain or play politics for us. We must win. If we don’t win, we don’t deserve to be in the conversation.

There may only be one path to PCP for SMU, but it’s direct, with no detours or questions. And mustangs can run in a straight line very fast.