The ACC could be overhauling its tiebreakers after No. 10 Miami was left out of the conference title game.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Wednesday that the conference will examine its tiebreaking rules after Duke won a five-way tiebreaker for second place in the conference. The Blue Devils then took down Virginia to win the ACC title but were left out of the College Football Playoff because of their 8-5 record.
Miami got in as the final at-large team after controversially swapping spots with Notre Dame in the final set of playoff rankings. That switch has caused a rift between the ACC and Notre Dame; the Fighting Irish are a part of the ACC in every sport but football and the football team has a scheduling alliance with the conference.
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As Phillips rhetorically asked about the likelihood of the conference needing to go deep into its tie-breaking procedures to figure out the second-place team, the answer is that it was a fairly likely outcome given the size of the ACC.
After the Pac-12 dissolved following the 2023 season, the ACC added Cal and Stanford. SMU also joined. Their arrivals pushed the number of teams in the conference to 17 as the ACC also got rid of its division format.
ACC teams played just eight conference games this season, meaning that each team in the conference played just eight of a possible 16 opponents. Five teams finished a game behind Virginia at 6-2 and another five finished tied at 4-4.
Without many chances for head-to-head tiebreakers to be utilized, it was always clear that the ACC — or another conference like the SEC, Big Ten or Big 12 — would have to go deep into its tiebreakers for a vital reason.
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Duke got into the conference title game ahead of SMU, Miami, Pitt and Georgia Tech after SMU lost its final game of the season to drop to 6-2. Had the Mustangs beaten Cal in Week 14, the ACC’s scenario would have been straightforward. SMU would have played Virginia.
Instead, the conference had to utilize its three-team tiebreaker rules among five teams that didn’t have many common opponents or games against each other. Duke played just one team (Georgia Tech) it was tied with in the standings. Miami played two (SMU and Pitt).
That led the conference to go through its first four tiebreakers before using the combined winning percentage of a team’s conference opponents as the deciding tiebreaker. And Virginia was a deciding factor in that tiebreaker, too. The Blue Devils were the only 6-2 team who played the Cavaliers.
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The ACC is moving to nine conference games in 2026, but that only slightly decreases the likelihood of needing to go deep into the tiebreakers. Teams will still not play nearly half of the conference in a given year and finding common games could be difficult.
Overhauling the tiebreakers could be an arduous process and one that could even bring the CFP rankings into play. In the American Conference, Tulane won a three-team tiebreaker at the top of the conference and hosted the conference title game against North Texas because it was highest in the playoff rankings entering the final week of the season. Though the CFP rankings are arbitrary, they at least provide a straightforward metric. And, in the ACC’s case, it would have put Miami in the conference title game.
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