A season-long journey to a new land, a 12-team playoff, wound along a route full of wild twists and turns leading up to this moment on a cold December evening in Charlotte. A season that began in August ended with the very last game of the non-playoff season. Heading into midnight in the final conference championship game that ended Saturday, the Clemson Tigers delivered a dramatic blow that served three goals at once.

Freshman Nolan Hauser’s 56-yard walk-off field goal in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game propelled Clemson to 10-3 in the playoffs and a 34-31 victory over the SMU Mustangs. In doing so, the Tigers stole someone else’s playoff bid. If there is any justice or reason in the world, the team that was eliminated, the zombie monster that kept rising from the dead, is the 9-3 Alabama Crimson Tide. And it confirmed 11-2 SMU as a playoff team.

In the end – at the very end – the ACC threaded the multi-bid needle. After some defiance of the committee and a year of infighting in which league members Florida State and Clemson sued the ACC over the media rights grant agreement, the ACC failed to land.

That result doesn’t do much for the 10-2 Miami Hurricanes, who fell behind Alabama in the CFP rankings on Tuesday – a dubious decision that angered ACC leadership and also fueled years of anger over the Tide beating undefeated Florida State Seminoles made it to the final four-team playoffs. But that was the result the ACC needed — a Clemson win in a close, competitive game that should prevent SMU from falling from three spots ahead of Alabama to behind the Tide.

“It would be criminal if we weren’t there,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee told ET shortly after midnight. “It would be wrong on so many levels. It would be wrong for so much of what college football stands for. We basically just played a playoff game out there, and we played pretty damn well. … We showed up and fought each other. We should be there, they know we should be there. So we’ll see what happens.”

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney endorsed SMU as a playoff team immediately afterward.

“They better be in the damn playoffs,” he said.

Alabama fans experienced an emotional rollercoaster in this game. What actually came out was the worst possible outcome. For a long time, it looked like it would be a Clemson loss to SMU, which threatened to create a scenario in which the committee drops the Mustangs from the playoffs and keeps Bama in the game.

Trailing 31-14 early in the fourth quarter, SMU began a furious resurgence with its pyrotechnic (but unpredictable) offense. The Mustangs scored 17 points in 13 minutes and tied the game with 16 seconds left, seemingly sending the game into overtime. But Clemson made three big plays to force regulation time and seemingly knock Alabama out of playoff contention.

The first was a 41-yard kickoff return by Adam Randall to the Clemson 45-yard line – the Tigers’ longest return this season. The second, with nine seconds left, was a pass from Cade Klubnik to Antonio Williams for 17 yards. This play, followed by a timeout, gave Clemson the chance to attempt the long bomb kick for the win.

Hauser, from nearby Cornelius, North Carolina, jumped at the chance to become a Clemson hero. He had made 16 of 21 field goals this season but missed from 44 yards early in the game. And that would extend his career by five meters.

With a sharp snap from Holden Caspersen and a good serve from Swinney’s son Clay, Hauser fired the kick into the air – just long enough to clear the crossbar. (The kick may have been good from 57, but not from 58. It was close.) That sparked a Clemson eruption, with players rushing onto the field and the elder Swinney sprinting across the artificial turf.

It was a remarkable comeback from the brink for Clemson. How many times were the Tigers counted out? At least three, once for every loss. Earlier in the season there was a 31-point loss to the Georgia Bulldogs. Then there was a 33-21 home loss to the Louisville Cardinals at the start of November. And the 17:14 home loss at the end of the month against the rival South Carolina Gamecocks.

This result made this ACC title a deciding game for Clemson. If you win, the Tigers are there. If you lose, they’re not even close.

They rose to the occasion. With the help of a few big turnovers by otherwise strong SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings in the first quarter, Clemson built a 21-7 lead in less than 12 minutes. A Hauser field goal extended the lead to 17 at halftime, and the lead was still 17 entering the final quarter. Then the drama kicked into high gear.

Clemson made the four-team playoffs six straight years, from 2015-21, winning the national championship twice during that time. But the Tigers have missed the field the past three seasons, sparking major fears about whether Swinney had lost his mojo. That got worse this season when it looked like Clemson wouldn’t even make it to the expanded version of the playoffs.

In the end, the Tigers are back in the title hunt. They could end up being the No. 12 seed when the bracket is announced at noon ET on Sunday, which could lead to a cold road game in South Bend or State College, Pennsylvania. It won’t be easy, but Clemson deserves its chance.

And SMU too. It would be a travesty of the highest order if a defeat in the 13th game by three points dropped them behind a team with a worse record that was sitting at home this weekend.

In all likelihood, the ACC will be the tournament’s third multi-bid conference, joining the Big Ten (four teams) and the SEC (three). That was in doubt until the final play, but when Hauser’s shot cleared the crossbar, the path was clear for two teams from this struggling league to advance to the playoffs.