Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to conference championship week.

This is the Early Edge, and we're brought to you by BetMGM, Make It Legendary.

My name is Senazat, and we've got a great show for you today. We're breaking down most, if not all of the championship week games. And then, of course, we've got some best bets and some futures to go over. Let's go ahead and bring in the stars of the show. You don't want to hear from me. You want to hear from Emery Hunt. You want to hear from Mike McClure, and you want to hear from Tom Gasali and gentlemen, I'm going to get right to it because we do have a lot of games to go over in this first game. This is just good producing from our producer, Ben. The one that can cause the most chaos, Mike McClure, I'm going to start with you. It's Duke and it's Virginia, and there's certainly a lot of implications particularly if Duke wins

let's talk about it here at betmgm it's a three and a half point spread Virginia the favorite

57 and a half point total Mike before we get into who you like in this game can you just kind

of sprinkle around in terms of what what this means to some of the other teams that maybe are on the

outside looking in. Yeah, it's full chaos, frankly, if Duke is able to win this game,

because I don't think there's a scenario that Duke would be a representative in the college

football playoffs. So we'd then move outside of the power conferences, putting additional

winners in. It would certainly hurt teams like Miami in its own conference, for example, that

may be trying to look for that at large bid. And there's just large financial ramifications for

a conference like the ACC who had a big opportunity or still has a big opportunity to put a team in the college football playoff.

You know, a national championship just to the conference itself still worth around 20 million minimum.

It would be around 4 million for a team to make the college football playoff, which is not an insignificant number,

especially to a conference like

the ACC who is not necessarily where the Big Ten and the SEC are right now. So it's a huge deal.

And I think it certainly favors Virginia in this game is there's a lot of incentive to get a team in

the college football playoff for the ACC. Emery, before we get into who we actually like in this game, if Duke is able to pull off the upset, and this is only a three and a half point spread, up from two and a half, if they're able to pull off the upset behind Darien, Mention, company, what team on the outside looking in is like really rooting for that. Probably James Madison because like we talked about before,

when we're looking at a college football playoff that has already rubber stamp,

you know, Tulane or North Texas and whoever wins going to get the G5 spot in the postseason.

But if James Madison is able to win and Duke wins, James Madison

would probably end up being ranked 12 and 1 conference champ. They'll get in over the ACC champ.

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