For the current 2025 ACC football situation, if SMU loses, it is eliminated from ACC Championship Game contention and another team (most often Duke in the discussed scenarios) takes its spot in the title game. That also effectively ends SMU’s realistic path to the College Football Playoff this season, because their playoff odds were tied to winning the ACC title; a loss means their fate falls to tiebreakers and rankings they are very unlikely to win.

More specifically, SMU entered Week 14 in a “win-and-in” scenario for the ACC Championship Game, meaning a victory would have clinched one of the two spots in Charlotte regardless of other results. With a loss, SMU needed a complex combination of other teams losing plus favorable analytics-based tiebreakers, and the actual loss to Cal (38–35) removed them from ACC title contention once those tiebreakers were applied.

That loss also reshaped the ACC race by opening the door for Duke, which moved into SMU’s vacated spot in the conference championship because of the league’s tiebreaker rules and other Week 14 results. For SMU’s national outlook, analysts have emphasized that its only realistic path to the College Football Playoff was to win the ACC; losing means relying on an at‑large bid that is not considered viable given the committee’s treatment of one‑ and two‑loss ACC teams versus SEC and Big Ten programs.