ACC changing tiebreaker policy for conference championship after 5-way tie

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The ACC is changing its conference championship tiebreaker policy.

Head-to-head matchups will remain the top tiebreaker, but the third tiebreaker will be settled by which team ranks highest in the Team Success Ranking by Sport Source Analytics, which is one of the metrics used by the College Football Playoff committee.

Last year, the league needed its seventh tiebreaker to settle a five-way tie for second place in the conference standings at 6-2. Miami, which later reached the national championship game after earning the last at-large bid in the College Football Playoff, was excluded from the title game in favor of Virginia and Duke. Miami was ranked No. 12 in the penultimate CFP rankings and moved up to No. 10 after being idle on championship week, edging out Notre Dame. The Hurricanes had trailed the Irish in every CFP poll but the last one, despite beating the Irish 27-24 in Miami in Week 1.

ACC champion Duke did not qualify for the field after finishing below Sun Belt champion James Madison in the final CFP poll.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said the second guideline of the new tiebreaker is that no team will be “rewarded or penalized” for how many conference games it played. This year, the ACC’s new scheduling policy begins. Twelve of the league’s 17 teams will play nine conference games. Five others will play eight because of pre-existing nonconference games against power conference opponents.

Beginning in 2027, all but one ACC team will play nine conference games. The team playing eight conference games will rotate each year.

Last December, Phillips said the league would examine its tiebreaker policies, and the league’s leadership has spent time in the seven months since assessing its options. One popular option that would boost the league’s odds of sending its champion to the College Football Playoff field is using the final CFP rankings as a tiebreaker. However, those rankings aren’t released until Tuesday of championship week, meaning the ACC’s title game participants wouldn’t be decided until then.

College Football Playoff selection rules provide five spots for the five highest-ranked conference champions. Miami’s exclusion from the ACC title game after losing the tiebreaker last year paved the way for two Group of 6 champions to be included in the 12-team Playoff field for the first time. James Madison and American champion Tulane were both included in the field. Both teams lost first-round road games, with the Dukes losing at Oregon 51-34 after trailing 34-6 at halftime.

Tulane lost 41-10 at Ole Miss. Miami beat Texas A&M in College Station in the first round and two rounds later, beat Ole Miss 31-27 to advance to the title game, where it lost 27-21 to Indiana.