Duke parties like its 1989 — and makes its case to be in College Football Playoff field

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There was no time for the Gatorade bath, a rite of p***age for most champions.

Duke’s players wouldn’t dare do it midway through the fourth quarter, when they had a double-digit lead. And they weren’t going to do it as Virginia rallied to force overtime.

So, long after linebacker Luke Mergott intercepted a p*** on a trick play in overtime to seal a 27-20 victory over No. 17 Virginia that ignited a sideline celebration unlike anything Duke’s experienced since 1989, coach Manny Diaz thought he was safe.

But when defensive end Vincent Anthony brought Diaz in for a hug and wrapped him tight, safety Caleb Weaver ambushed the coach with an orange cooler full of ice water.

“I thought I was wise enough to duck out of the way, and it sort of hit me in the lower back, down,” Diaz said. “So I’m pretty cool from here up. But from here down, it’s rather uncomfortable. But it does feel like victory. So I’ll take it every time.”

As for Mergott?

Through hugs and high fives, the sophomore never let the ball go. High and tight, never letting it out of his sight. He declined to disclose where he stashed the ball after emerging from the locker room without it, but he did broach the possibility of donating it to Duke. Diaz called it the play of the season.

“I’ll probably sleep with it tonight,” Mergott said, adding that it ranked No. 1 for him in football moments throughout his life.

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— Duke Football (@DukeFOOTBALL) December 7, 2025

While there may have been some internal conflict among ACC loyalists tuning in to watch Duke upset Virginia and throw the league’s immediate College Football Playoff future into serious peril, there was no such split loyalty for those wearing royal blue.

But there were realities to wrestle with after the confetti cannons had stopped firing and the blue-and-white paper had been sucked up off the turf by staffers roaming the field wearing backpack vacuums.

The Blue Devils have less than a one percent chance to make the Playoff field, according to a model from Austin Mock of The Athletic. The ACC’s best chance to place a team in the bracket is Miami, which was absent from Saturday night’s proceedings after losing a tiebreaker among the five teams that tied for second place in an overgrown superconference — a conference that will likely re-examine those tiebreakers in the offseason.

Miami, despite having a near-identical resume to Notre Dame and a head-to-head win in Week 1, has trailed the Fighting Irish in the CFP rankings each week this season, first by eight spots and most recently by two. The team that separated them in Tuesday’s rankings, BYU, lost 34-7 to Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game matinee.

Mock’s model gives Miami a 17 percent chance to make the field.

“I have conviction and confidence in our teams, starting with Miami,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told the Associated Press this week. “The second piece of that is the Virginia-Duke winner should absolutely be in this College Football Playoff.”

Phillips, approached on the field by The Athletic after handing the ACC title trophy to Diaz and Duke’s players, declined to comment.

Diaz preferred not to discuss hypotheticals regarding the Playoff scenarios involving Duke, but with “new information” now headed the committee’s way — i.e., a Blue Devils’ win over a ranked opponent — he had plenty to say to make his team’s case.

On Friday night, he watched James Madison win the Sun Belt title, beating Troy 31-14, though the Dukes led only 17-14 until they added two late touchdowns to provide the final score. JMU, No. 25 in the CFP committee’s rankings this week, has the inside track to be the fifth-highest-ranked conference champion in the 12-team bracket.

Diaz, though, is confident Duke will jump JMU and be included in the field.

“You just can’t compare going through the Sun Belt this year,” he said. “It’s been a really good conference in years past. But most of their top teams are just having down years. So (JMU was) probably just not challenged in a way they would have been going through a normal Sun Belt season. Sometimes that happens.

“You gotta look at who you’re playing against. That’s the whole point of why you play a Power 4 schedule. There’s a reason why these coaches are all leaving to take Power 4 jobs. There’s a recognition that that’s where the best competition is.”

Said defensive end Wesley Williams, who had three quarterback hurries and a tackle for loss in the win: “We’re a Power 4 conference champion. Simple enough.”

It might be simple in the committee’s eyes — but not in the way that Williams, or the rest of the Blue Devils, think. The odds are against the committee granting a five-loss team admission onto the sport’s biggest stage.

But all the Playoff discussion overshadows a stark reality: Duke is an ACC champion. In football.

The Blue Devils hadn’t won an outright conference title since going 6-0 in ACC play back in 1962. William D. Murray, the coach of that team, died in 1986, three years before Steve Spurrier coached Duke to a share of an ACC title in 1989 and parlayed that into the Florida job. This week, Spurrier left Diaz a voicemail wishing him luck.

The Blue Devils needed a little bit of it. They coughed up a 10-point lead with four minutes to go, allowing Virginia to march 96 yards in 10 plays to send the game into overtime after Cavs quarterback Chandler Morris found Eli Wood for a game-tying, 18-yard touchdown p***. But when Duke quarterback Darian Mensah, who arrived in the offseason with a reported two-year, $8 million deal, kneeled out the remaining seconds of regulation, both sidelines exploded in excitement.

“We try to pride ourselves on being comfortable in the uncomfortable moments,” Mergott said.

Duke seemed unconcerned with the pressure of the moment and the self-inflicted errors that had led to it.

“We said, ‘Hey, guess what, we get to go play overtime to win the ACC. That sounds pretty fun. Let’s go do it,’” Diaz said.

And Duke did it.

The Blue Devils made history. They hugged and high-fived.

After Mergott snagged the interception — “Once it went up, I knew I was coming down with it. I didn’t think he was going to throw it. I was on that kid,” he said — the sideline spilled onto the field. Defensive tackle Aaron Hall collapsed to the ground and put his hands around his helmet. Wood, who caught the game-tying score, spiked his helmet on the turf in frustration.

Team staffers p***ed out shirts. Red-eyed coaches hugged and wiped tears from their faces numbed by the cold.

Diaz couldn’t stop smiling.

Duke will watch the committee roll out their decision on Sunday. But what might have been a nightmare for the ACC was a dream come true for royal blue.