By Owain Jones
Duke’s stunning overtime victory against Virginia to claim the ACC Championship has sparked a conversation about how the conference selects its title game participants. With the ACC now facing possible exclusion from the College Football Playoff, expect serious discussions this offseason about overhauling the championship game selection process.
Why Are ACC Championship Game Tiebreaker Changes Being Discussed?
The ACC is highly unlikely to have a team in the College Football Playoff, which will spark intense conversations this summer about how the conference ended up here.
Duke (8-5) winning the ACC Championship creates a nightmare scenario where the league’s automatic bid goes to a team with five losses, while Miami (10-2) watched from home, despite being the ACC’s highest-ranked team at No. 12 in the CFP rankings and No. 14 in the UK & Ireland College Football Rankings.
Miami finished in a five-way tie for second place in the ACC at 6-2. Still, Duke reached the championship game against Virginia based on the fifth tiebreaker: conference opponent win percentage.
The difference between the ACC having a top-20 matchup in its conference championship game and potentially missing the College Football Playoff as a league was just a couple of one-off results between non-contenders. Who played in the title game essentially came down to how other teams performed against teams that the ACC teams played.
While admitting they have to be better, Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich said, “and I can’t tell you what the answer is right now, but I think we’ve got to look at some different things that might be able to streamline that and make sure that the league is going to put its best foot forward”.
Radakovich’s comments represent the frustration of Miami, as well as that of the conference executives. For the ACC champion not to be represented in the expanded 12-team playoff format is devastating as a Power Four conference.
However, does it really matter? Is the answer not to change the rules, but to have ACC teams just be better?
On a basic level, yes. But it is more nuanced than that.
On the surface, the ACC’s three traditional powerhouses (Clemson, Miami, and Florida State) haven’t all been simultaneously relevant at the same time in recent seasons. They haven’t won eight or more games in the same season since 2016.
Additionally, there is a narrative around the conference and questions over its funding model compared to other Power Four conferences. The narrative around the ACC is that the conference is working on borrowed time.
The ACC’s new revenue distribution model awards 60% of TV revenue based on five-year viewership, while 40% is evenly distributed. Football accounts for 75% of the unequal share and men’s basketball for 25%, but this still reflects a league that hasn’t fully committed to football supremacy like the SEC and Big Ten.
Following settlements with Clemson and Florida State in March 2025, the ACC reduced exit fees from a projected $700 million to $165 million in 2025-26, decreasing by $18 million annually.
The ACC is still trying to balance basketball tradition with the realities of football. Schools can now share up to $20.5 million annually with athletes through revenue sharing, with about 75% going to football programs. But when top football programs can’t stay competitive, that money doesn’t go as far.
Meanwhile, the financial gulf continues to widen. SEC schools will earn $21 million to $23 million annually from CFP distributions, while ACC schools will receive just $12 million to $14 million. Big Ten schools receive up to $63 million in total conference payouts compared to the ACC’s $45 million average.
What Could Change and Why It Won’t Matter?
The ACC isn’t alone in struggling with tiebreaker chaos, but other conferences have found more innovative solutions.
The American Athletic Conference offers an intriguing model that could save the ACC from future tiebreaker chaos. In the event of a multi-team tie, the American’s procedure states: If there is no head-to-head result, and one of the tied teams was ranked in the latest available CFP Selection Committee rankings and doesn’t lose in the final weekend of regular-season conference play, it will be declared a Championship Game participant.
Had the ACC used this system, Miami would have represented the conference in Charlotte, thereby all but guaranteeing the conference a spot in the College Football Playoff, with both teams in the conference championship game ranked in the top 20.
However, it is important to remember that ACC coaches and athletic directors voted on the tiebreakers added after the ACC removed divisions in 2023. Still, these circumstances will almost certainly be raised again this offseason.
But the reality is that while the conference is exciting, fun, and competitive on the field, it hasn’t produced the results off the field that stakeholders and executives expect.
A change in tiebreaker rules won’t solve the fundamental problem. The conference isn’t producing elite football teams at the rate needed to compete with blue-blood programs in the SEC and Big Ten.
Clemson won two national championships under Dabo Swinney and reached the playoff six times in seven years from 2015 to 2021. That dominance masked the rest of the conference’s mediocrity. Now that Clemson has fallen off, Miami and Florida State have left to carry the torch.
Florida State won the ACC in 2023 at 13-0 and was snubbed from the playoff. That exclusion broke them, and they went 2-10 in 2024 and 5-6 in 2025. Mike Norvell, who is 7-16 (3-13 in ACC play) over the past two seasons, will return for a seventh year with the Seminoles.
Miami had its best season in years at 10-2 and still couldn’t make its conference championship game. This isn’t a talent problem; the conference is competitive. It also isn’t a tiebreaker problem; you can’t lose to Wake Forest and Louisville like Miami did and expect postseason results. It is a resource and timing issue.
Changing championship game criteria won’t fix the ACC’s existential crisis. The conference’s narrative needs to change. The idea that the ACC is working on borrowed time as programs explore leaving has dented its reputation. The ACC is also portrayed as embracing chaos and cannibalizing itself.
Changing the tiebreaker rules may paper over the cracks as they look back on 2025, but going forward, the conference needs its flagship programs to improve if it wants to compete in the playoff era and become as nationally relevant in the expanded bracket as other conferences.
OWAIN JONES
college football & NFL DRAFT ANALYST
OWAIN jones COVERS EVERYTHING college football & NFL DRAFT. COMING WITH PLENTY OF EXPERIENCE, OWAIN was PREVIOUSLY a writer for pfsn and WAS THE NFL DRAFT EDITOR AT NINETY-NINE YARDS WHERE HE CREATED DRAFT TALK, YOU CAN FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER @OwainJonesCFB