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ACC considering changes to conference championship for CFP purposes
By Andrew Olson
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ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said the conference may change how it crowns a champion in the 12-team College Football Playoff era.
Phillips spoke to media members on Sunday. SMU’s Playoff berth was a topic of conversation. The Mustangs entered Championship Saturday as the ACC’s regular-season champion and No. 8 in the selection committee rankings.
SMU was seemingly solidly in the 12-team field entering the ACC Championship Game, but had to sweat out Selection Sunday after falling to Clemson. Phillips says the conference is considering making changes to its championship game.
The ACC may instead go with its Nos. 2 and 3 teams in Charlotte and have the top team sit out as to not hurt its Playoff candidacy in an extra game. Per Andrea Adelson of ESPN, the ACC could even open up its final weekend of the regular season and have the top four teams play (1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 3) and the winners play in the conference title game.
The conference championship games are important, as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips said, per Adelson. “Do you play 2 versus 3? 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. I have alluded to that in some of our every-other-week-AD calls, and these are some of the things moving forward. We want to have a recap of the regular season, postseason, and what do we think moving forward?
How the selection committee would handle conference championship games was a hot topic ahead of the first Selection Sunday of the 12-team era. Ultimately, the losers of Power conference championship games did not see their rankings greatly impacted. Texas, Penn State and SMU all made the 12-team field after losing conference title contests.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
