The second and third place teams in the conference title game? A two-week conference playoff? Those are potential changes the ACC is considering making to its championship format in response to the expanded College Football Playoff.
Last Sunday, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said that the conference is in discussions with schools about tweaks it could make to the format of the conference championship. This comes after SMU faced uncertainty last month heading into playoff selection day following the team’s loss to Clemson in the ACC Championship.
The first of these potential changes includes giving the regular season champion of the ACC a bye for the conference title game and having the second and third place finishers play the game instead.
Supposing the regular season champion is high enough in the playoff rankings, such a format would all but guarantee the ACC two spots in the playoffs.
The second change being considered is creating a four-team ACC playoff that would begin in the last week of the regular season, with the winners of those games moving on to play in the conference championship.
Such a change would not come without a multitude of issues, though. Teams such as Clemson and Georgia Tech play their rivalry games in the last week of the regular season. A shift such as this one would create a ripple effect among the schedules of several schools.
Phillips feels that the potential changes maintain the importance of the conference championship game, even if the regular season champion is not playing in it, according to a report by ESPN’s Andrea Adelson.
“The conference championship games are important, as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips said to ESPN. “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.”
While these changes have been proposed, nothing is concrete, and a decision has yet to be made. However, conversations surrounding these changes will continue at the conference’s winter meetings next month. It remains to be seen whether these changes or anything similar will come out of those conversations if anything at all.