ASU football made Iowa State look easy in a 45-19 blowout win in the Big 12 championship, but claiming the conference title may or may not hand the Sun Devils a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Arizona State is currently ranked No. 15 in the country despite beating Iowa State, BYU, Kansas State and Utah who were all ranked at the time of facing each team, and are on the outside looking in. Boise State, who plays in the Mountain West Conference, is 12-1 and is expected to be the last program to receive an automatic bye after a 21-7 win over UNLV in the conference title game.
Clemson vs. SMU (ACC), Texas vs. Georgia (SEC) and Oregon vs. Penn State (Big 10) will all take place on Saturday and the results of each conference championship will decide the final ranking heading into the CFP. Based on what happens, there is a chance ASU does get a bye but there is no guarantee based on the projections.
Since Boise State won the Mountain West, which is a weaker conference than the Big 12, and is led by Heisman Trophy hopeful Ashton Jeanty, the Broncos have been given more national recognition than Arizona State. Indicating the CFP committee’s true thoughts on where both teams stand after both won, last week saw Boise State bumped up to No. 10 in the country while ASU was No. 15.
Florida State, who just missed the cut last year in the four-team playoff with a perfect 13-0, didn’t play on this big stage because Jordan Travis was injured.
Why this is important is because if who the quarterback was for FSU decided the Seminoles’ fate, ASU head coach Kenny Dillingham stated how important Sam Leavitt has been to the Sun Devils this season and how his production should warrant more weight.
“I think the judging of last year, they left a team [Florida State] out because of a quarterback,” Dillingham said. “I think our play, we’re 11-1 with our starting quarterback, having beat four ranked teams, having won the Big 12 championship. Because we made a statement with our quarterback is that valuable, I think there should be a real chance we get a first-round bye and I definitely think we should host a game.”
Video Credit: Big 12 Conference on YouTube
Leavitt is 11-1 with the Sun Devils since transferring from Michigan State, and has guided Arizona State to the conference championship after the program suffered back-to-back 3-9 seasons. The Oregon native has passed for 24 touchdowns and 2,633 from 192 completions.
With Leavitt, running back Cam Skattebo, defensive back Xavion Alford and wide receiver Jordyn Tyson being just some of the names that have been part of ASU’s rebuild, they have defied the odds of what the outside noise thought about them.
Putting in the work in the offseason and constructing the team mostly from scratch, Dillingham wanted to credit his guys for how they bought into the culture and stuck by each other to get to this point.
“These guys have worked so hard, these guys have accomplished things that I don’t think any team has ever accomplished,” Dillingham said, “Being picked 16th out of 16th and winning a championship, we are 11-1 with this man to my left [Sam Leavitt], we are Big 12 champs when he is on the field.
“If you were able to look at our resume with Sam Leavitt as our starting quarterback, I think you could look really deep and hard to see where we stand with champions, where we stand with conference champions because we already made the decision that quarterbacks are very important to the college football committee. I think it is time to double down on how important the quarterback is, and look back at our season as our quarterback played.”
The fresh new rankings will come out Sunday which ultimately gives ASU a clear picture of where it stands. It will be interesting to see how the committee weighs the strength of schedules and overall play from each team.
Even though there is no clear answer just yet of when and where ASU will play, this quick turnaround is a testament to everyone involved in the program because each person has played a part in a special season like this.
Not bad for a team picked dead last in the Big 12 Preseason Media Poll.
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Reporter Alec Cipollini covers the Phoenix Suns, ASU Athletics and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on his X account, @AlecCipollini
