ACC announces new football championship game tiebreaker policy
· Yahoo Sports
A year after the ACC nearly missed out on having a team in the College Football Playoff, the conference has announced the new tiebreaker policies for the ACC Football Championship Game.
Last season, the Duke Blue Devils, who were 7-5, snuck into the championship game over the Miami Hurricanes due to a five-way tie. While Duke beat Virginia, they were not one of the five highest-ranked conference champions and missed out on the CFP, with the Hurricanes making it as an at-large team.
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The conference wanted to make sure that did not happen again, with the new system being built on several guiding principles. First, head-to-head results will matter most; teams will not be reawarded or punished for playing a different number of ACC games; and the team with the "strongest overall body of work" will be selected if head-to-head results cannot separate two teams.
The conference will use the Team Success Ranking provided by SportSource Analytics to determine which team has the best body of work. The new policy was evaluated by the conference's 17 athletic directors, which included more than 10,000 simulated season outcomes to ensure the model fairly addressed a wide range of championship scenarios.
The new rules will also help with teams playing a different number of conference games moving forward. The ACC is requiring teams to play nine conference games, but five members will not be doing so in 2026 due to previously scheduled non-conference games against Power opponents. Starting in 2027, one member will play an eight-game conference schedule with the remaining 16 teams playing nine.
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This article originally appeared on FSU Wire: ACC announces new football championship game tiebreaker policy