If Wake and Clemson win out, what are the odds Wake Forest gets an NY6 bowl? — Warner M.
Bitter: This year? It’s a near certainty. In that scenario, Clemson would be a playoff team. And since this year’s semifinals are the Fiesta and Peach Bowls, the Orange Bowl would take the next-highest-ranked ACC team as a replacement for the Tigers. Wake is the second-highest-ranked team at the moment, and in the scenario you lay out, it would knock off the three other teams currently ranked in one of the polls (NC State, Syracuse and North Carolina), virtually guaranteeing it would stay that way.
The trickier situation is what would happen if Clemson loses along the way but still gets to the ACC championship game and wins it. Even at 12-1, that might not be a playoff team, depending on who the Tigers are being compared to. And if they’re not, they’d get the automatic Orange Bowl invite.
So for Wake Forest to get an at-large bid to a New Year’s Six bowl in that situation, it would need to be ranked high enough for consideration. Six of the 12 spots are guaranteed (five Power 5 champions plus the highest-ranked Group of 5 champion). Usually, there’s an outlier champion or two that comes from outside the top 12. But if you’re in the top 10 at that point, you have to like your chances.
If the Deacons win out, they’d surely be in the top 10. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves only six weeks into the season. There are a lot of land mines left out there. Let’s check back in with NC State after that game in the first week of November.