The ACC is weighing a pair of unprecedented changes to its conference championship game after the first season of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.
One of the possible changes would be to give the ACC regular-season champion a bye while having the second- and third-seeded teams in the conference play for the title, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told reporters Sunday. The other possible change would essentially create a four-team playoff within the conference, with the No. 1 and No. 4 seeds playing each other, with the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds going head-to-head during what would be the final week of the regular season. The winner of those games would play in the ACC Championship Game.
“The conference championship games are important, as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips questioned. “Do you play two versus three? You go through the regular season and whoever wins the regular season, just park them to the side, and then you play the second-place team versus the third-place team in your championship game. So you have a regular-season champion, and then you have a conference tournament or postseason champion.
“That’s one of the options — depending on how you treat the conference champions or that championship game, you may want to do it different.”
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Phillips’ possible change to the ACC championship format came on the heels of the conference nearly getting just one team in the first 12-team CFP. Regular-season champion SMU lost to Clemson on a 56-yard field goal at the buzzer in the conference title game. The win gave Clemson an automatic bid into the CFP, but SMU had to spend the next several hours waiting to see if it would be passed over for a three-loss team in the SEC.
SMU, who was ranked eighth in the CFP poll before its loss to Clemson, wound up making the 12-team field, sneaking in with the last at-large bid. Even though SMU wound up making the CFP, there was a sentiment among coaches around the game at the time that teams might have been better suited to not play in their conference championship games to help their postseason standing.
SMU coach Rhett Lashlee was among that group. “If our team all got COVID today and didn’t play, we’re in,” Lashlee told On3 in December. “We don’t have another data point to drop us below anybody that’s behind us. I think if you open up that door, you’re going to see a lot of people do a lot of crazy things.”
As some believed it was best for SMU to drop out of the ACC title game, Lashlee didn’t think that was the honorable thing to do. “We’re going to go play in Charlotte, and we’re going to try to compete for our championship because that’s the right thing to do,” he said. “That’s what competitors do. We value an opportunity to share the field with someone like Clemson, a fantastic team, and try to do something special.
“Like I said, I’m going to choose to believe that on Sunday that the right thing will be done as well on the other end.”
The ACC’s possible change to its conference championship game structure also comes as the College Football Playoff weighs changes to its format. Much of the debate over the first 12-team CFP has been over the seeding, but that will be determined at a later date. The CFP could also expand again in 2026.
For now, Phillips said he’ll bring up his ideas to possibly change the conference’s title game when he meets with the league’s head coaches on a conference call later in January.
“I have alluded to that in some of our every-other-week-AD calls, and these are some of the things moving forward,” Phillips said. “We want to have a recap of the regular season, postseason, and what do we think moving forward?”
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