THERE ARE TWO ways of looking at the situation the ACC faces entering Saturday's championship game in which Duke , a 7-5 team with multiple losses outside the Power 4, could win the conference and, in doing so, keep the league out of the College Football Playoff altogether.

The first is that it's simply a quirk of modern college football -- sprawling conferences with limited crossover between teams inevitably leading to a scenario where esoteric tiebreakers come into play. The ACC's system isn't much different than other conferences, the policy was approved by coaches and ADs, and Duke, for all its flaws, went 6-2 in league play.

The other perspective, however, is that the ACC -- for reasons rational, coincidental and, perhaps, metaphysical -- attracts the unusual.

The latter philoso

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