How close did Syracuse come to playing for spot in ACC title game this weekend? We have an answer

Syracuse, N.Y. — Syracuse will host one of the most meaningful games of the college football season this weekend with Miami (Fla.) playing for a spot in the ACC title game.
This year, having more than one conference loss sunk an ACC team’s hopes of playing for a league title.
In Syracuse, fans will look back on the early season loss to Stanford (3-8, 2-6 ACC) as the most head-scratching result in Fran Brown’s first season.
The early November loss at Boston College (6-5, 3-4) felt just as deflating, given the Eagles played much of the game with a backup quarterback and opted to put the ball in the air all of 13 times.
But given how the season has played out, the clunker in Pittsburgh will go down as perhaps the Orange’s most devastating defeat to its title hopes.
How so?
If all prior ACC results hold, a potential 7-1 league record, with wins over Stanford and Boston College, still wouldn’t have been enough for Syracuse to reach the ACC Championship Game in Charlotte.
ACC tie-breaker rules show Syracuse would have still finished behind Clemson and Southern Methodist based on its record vs. common conference opponents all played equal times (1-1). And Clemson would have edged Syracuse for the ACC’s No. 2 team based on its record vs. common conference opponents all played equal times (3-1).
In other words, Pitt sunk Syracuse.
This exercise was all a result of a tremendous tool built by Josh Prins, an actuary who graduated from Iowa State with a degree in electrical engineering. Prins’s work started about 20 years ago to help sort through Big 12 women’s basketball seeding. He couldn’t have known then what was to come with conference realignment, and the site has become a godsend at a time conferences are bloated with 16, 17 and 18 teams, resulting in unbalanced schedules and confusing tie-breaking scenarios.
The tool allows fans to play out all sorts of conference tie-breaking scenarios in college football and basketball. Bookmark it.
Now, what if Syracuse beat Pitt and dropped only one other conference game heading into Saturday’s showdown against the Hurricanes?
The stakes on Saturday would have largely depended on which team dealt the Orange a loss.
If Syracuse beat BC and Pitt and still lost to Stanford, a 7-1 Orange team is out.
If Syracuse beat Stanford and Pitt and still lost to BC, a 7-1 Orange team is in.
In fact, in that scenario, it could have been playing to be the No. 1 team in the conference, depending on SMU’s outcome against Cal this weekend.
There were other possible scenarios earlier in the season in which a potential 7-1 Syracuse team could have clinched a spot in the conference title game this weekend – again, assuming all other prior results held.
In each scenario, it’d be playing for a spot in the title game on Saturday afternoon in the dome because of the league tiebreaker concerning conference opponent win percentage.
Just in case you were wondering.