Miami and Florida State worked their way into the losers' bracket of the College World Series and one of the ACC teams is going home today.

The rivals play at 2 p.m. at Rosenblatt Stadium. It's not where the Canes, the No. 1 seed in the tournament, or Noles, who won 54 games, expected to be.

"I'm certainly surprised that both of us are playing an elimination game at the earliest possible time," FSU coach Mike Martin said in today's USA Today.

Miami won the regular-season series in Tallahassee. Stanford and Georgia play in the top half of the bracket at 7 p.m. today.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Brent Milleville's three-run homer highlighted Stanford's record-tying 11-run ninth inning and the Cardinal beat Florida State 16-5 in the opening game of the College World Series on Saturday.

Stanford (40-22-2) will play Monday against Georgia, who beat top-seeded Miami 7-4. The Seminoles (54-13) will try to stay alive Monday against the Hurricanes.

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We're big on nonconference football games here and their meaning to the ACC. Matt Hayes, of The Sporting News, takes a closer look at the nonconference schedules for the ACC, SEC and Big East and ranks them.

Hayes ranks Miami's schedule the toughest in the ACC, no argument there, but he has Florida as the No. 1 schedule in the SEC because the Gators play Miami and Florida State. If it was 1994, maybe, but not in 2008.

CHAPEL HILL — It didn't take long Tuesday for North Carolina coach Mike Fox to be asked an all-too-familiar question: With UNC, Miami and Florida State all advancing to the College World Series, is this the year the ACC will finally win the national baseball championship?

"I don’t know. How many years has it been? Fifty-five?" he asked, laughing.

Wake Forest was the last team to win it, in 1955, a reporter reminded him.

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N.C. State fell short, and as the only road team that wasn't entirely unexpected, but the ACC will be well represented in the College World Series.

UNC, for the third straight year, Miami and Florida State will all make the trip to Omaha giving the ACC bragging rights for college baseball supremacy (again, fully acknowledging the fact that the conference hasn't produced a national champion since 1955).

The SEC and Pac-10 could have two CWS participants if LSU and Arizona State win tonight but no one can match the ACC's total. The ACC sent four teams to the CWS, baseball's Final Eight, in 2006.

The ACC placed three teams in the top eight overall seeds for the NCAA baseball tournament with Miami (No. 1), North Carolina (No. 2) and Florida State (No. 4) all earning top seeds.

The top seeds all will host four-team regionals as did eight at-large schools, like N.C. State.

The Wolfpack (38-20) will host James Madison (38-17) in the 7 p.m. game of the Raleigh regional while Charlotte and South Carolina will also meet at Doak Field.

The Tar Heels (46-12) will play Mt. St. Mary's (21-32) at 6 p.m. Friday in Cary, with Elon and UNC-Wilmington rounding out the regional.

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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — ACC player of the year Buster Posey missed his first collegiate start, but delivered a pinch-hit two-run single to cap a six-run rally that lifted Florida State to a 9-6 win over North Carolina on Saturday in the conference tournament.

Posey, who started all 184 games the Seminoles have played in the last three years before Saturday, was being rested, according to Florida State sports information. However, with the Seminoles trailing 5-3 and runners on second and third, Posey batted for Jason Stidham and hit a 2-2 pitch from Rob Wooten (5-2) into left-center to drive in the tying runs.

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Florida State will have to make do without receiver Preston Parker for the first two games of the season.

The Noles suspended Parker after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor weapon and marijuana charges.

Parker led the Noles with 62 catches and ranked second on the team with 791 receiving yards as a sophomore.

Oh, and by the way, the Noles conveniently open the season with a pair of I-AA teams — Western Carolina and Chattanooga.

HT: The Wizard of Odds

Florida State president T.K. Wetherell talks a good game about a college football playoff in this interview with Dennis Dodd (CBS Sports) but here's the nugget that should alarm you, the booster-club supporting, ticket-buying fan.

"...The charter plane that used to cost you $250,000 now costs you $400,000."

While gas skyrockets to $4 gallon and drains your wallet, it's going to whack football and basketball budgets even harder. Ultimately, who do you think is going to pay for that?

Here's a hint: Not the recession-proof school president or multi-millionaire coach.

The sky is falling around Bobby Bowden and Florida State football but the Ol' Dadgummer is talking about winning a third national title.

It's not kind to pick on the elderly but, coach, you don't win the national title for being the team with the most suspensions, NCAA violations maybe, but not suspensions (see the smart teams cheat and don't bother to administer any actual discipline until after the season).

Bowden's 78, and a gem with the media, so he deserves some slack but it's hard to believe he said this, after back-to-back 7-6 seasons, with a straight face:

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• Wake Forest and N.C. State
• Boston College and Clemson
• Florida State and Maryland
• Va. Tech and UVa
• Miami and Ga. Tech
• UNC and Duke

If you thought the ACC was bad last year, or the year before, or the year before ... brace yourself for 2008. The league could be even worse, if that's possible.

Attrition, either through the NFL Draft, graduation or suspensions, has hit the division champs, Boston College and Virginia Tech, hard.

Traditional powers Miami and Florida State, who went a combined 12-13 in 2007, are no longer reloading but out-and-out rebuilding. FSU is doing so with the handicap of an academic scandal.

The ACC, and Coastal Division in particular, is so bad that Duke could equal its combined win total since 2004 before October ends.

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2007 record: 7-6, 4-4 ACC

Returning starters: Offense 7, Defense 7.

Quarterback?: Yes. Drew Weatherford (9 TDs, 3 INTs)

Avoid in the ACC: Duke, UNC, UVa

Coaching situation: Bobby Bowden enters his 33rd season at FSU as the all-time winningest coach in I-A history (373 wins in 42 total seasons) but with pressure to recapture the program's form from the 1990s. At 78, Bowden won't be fired but he might be asked to resign if the Noles post a third straight 7-6 season.

Second-year offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher has been designated Bowden's successor, the head-coach-in-waiting.

"I'm on a one-year basis now," Bowden said. "I'm still the head football coach, nothing has changed there. As I've looked at the end of my career, you wonder how you're going to retire. It has been a relief for me."

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When the ACC spring meetings begin Sunday at Amelia Island, Fla., discussions of expanded conference scheduling will not be limited to basketball.

Also under review will be the possibility of going to a nine-game league format in football. Under the current system, ACC teams play eight conference games. Each school in the two six-team divisions — Atlantic and Coastal — play the other five division members plus three from the opposite division.

Should a nine-game format be adopted, each team would play four games against teams from the opposite division.

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If it's Wednesday, then Florida State lost another football player. It's starting tackle Daron Rose's turn to take an academic cliff dive off the team.

Here's the last paragraph of the AP write-up:

Coach Jimbo Fisher, who replaced Bobby Bowden, also will be without a half dozen of his top players for the first three games because of a classroom cheating scandal in a music history class.

Wait ... "Coach Jimbo Fisher?" The winningest coach in NCAA history retired and it's in the fifth graf of a juco transfer release? Whoa, way to bury the lede.

We're just rounding into pre-preseason football mode (the ACC pre-preview starts Thursday) but The Wizard of Odds follows the pigskin year-round.

The Wiz found this feature in the Philadelphia Daily News about Callahan Bright, a defensive tackle who was bound for Florida State three years ago but hasn't played a down of college football due to a host of legal and personal problems.

Bright, whom one NFL scout still thinks could be a first-round pick, will attempt to begin his college career at Shaw, a Division II school in Raleigh.