Texas Tech heading to Orange Bowl, where upstart JMU or Oregon will be waiting

MIAMI LAKES, Fla. (AP) – The Dukes got in over Duke, and facing the Ducks is their reward.

Bob Chesney will be bringing his UCLA team to Oregon next year, which would have been his first time going up against the Ducks. But he’s about to get an unplanned preview of that matchup when he takes James Madison to Eugene, Oregon for the biggest game in program history: a first-round College Football Playoff contest on Dec. 20.

It will be the first meeting between the schools, which is likely no surprise considering James Madison has been at the top level of college football for only four seasons. The first two were with Curt Cignetti as coach, who left for Indiana and has the unbeaten Big Ten champion Hoosiers as the No. 1 seed in this year’s CFP field. The last two were with Chesney, and he simply has the Dukes rolling.

“I think you’re going to see an inspired bunch and I think you’re going to see us continue to attack every single opportunity that we have – confident, inspired attack,” Chesney said when asked about his team on the bracket reveal broadcast on ESPN. “That’ll be our mantra as we go through this.”

James Madison (12-1) finished at No. 24 in the final College Football Playoff rankings this season, but the combination of being the champions of the Sun Belt Conference and being ranked ahead of Atlantic Coast Champion Duke was enough to give Chesney and the Dukes the No. 12 seed on the 12-team playoff bracket before he leaves for UCLA.

Oregon, the No. 5 seed, is 11-1.

The winner of the Oregon-James Madison game will face No. 4 Texas Tech (12-1), the Big 12 champion, in the Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens, Florida on Jan. 1 at noon, the first of three CFP quarterfinals scheduled for that day.

Texas Tech has a talent-rich roster, without question, and has won 12 games for the first time in school history. And the Red Raiders have taken plenty of criticism for the big-spending manner in which the team was built, which is now perfectly acceptable in this era of college sports. It has clearly paid off: The Red Raiders are in the CFP field for the first time.

“If we are going to buy a team, why not be the best?” star linebacker Jacob Rodriguez said after the Big 12 championship game win over BYU.

None of those three teams have ever played in the Orange Bowl. If Oregon gets there, it’ll mean the Ducks will be playing at Hard Rock Stadium, the place where Miami – and former Oregon coach Mario Cristobal – play home games.

But first, a home playoff game at Oregon’s Autzen Stadium awaits.

“I’m excited to see what Autzen is going to look like with our fans,” said Oregon coach Dan Lanning, who is 46-7 in his four seasons with the Ducks. “That atmosphere, I think we all saw how special those moments could be last season.”

Chesney will fly to UCLA on Monday, be formally introduced as the new coach there on Tuesday, then fly back to Virginia to jump into CFP game planning. The Dukes will practice Thursday and Friday, then get into their traditional game-week schedule before flying to Oregon.

He’s been through the playoff grind before: Chesney worked his way up from Division III and made seven appearances as a coach in the Division II and FCS tournaments – levels of college football that have had a bracketed way of deciding a champion for much longer than the top level has.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for his path to get to where he’s at,” Lanning said.

Chesney has been at James Madison for just two seasons, going 9-4 last year and winning the Boca Raton Bowl, then going 12-1 and counting this season.

Oregon was the top seed in the playoff last year, then fell 41-21 in the quarterfinals at the Rose Bowl to eventual champion Ohio State. In the four-team playoff era, the Ducks beat Florida State 59-20 in the semifinals following the 2014 season, then fell 42-20 to Ohio State in the final.