As the ACC tries to game the system, a question arises: Is the game itself really worth playing?
Two days before Ohio State beat Notre Dame (34-23) to win the first 12-team College Football Playoff, ESPN published a story with quotes from ACC commissioner Jim Phillips about some potential changes to the conference’s championship game.
One of those changes might be to create a mini-conference playoff before the national playoff — perhaps take the top four teams in conference play, seed them 1-4 and play a semi-final during the last week of the regular season before the conference championship.
What that does to the previously scheduled opponents for those top-four teams in regular season finales, I have no idea. Maybe they just adjust their schedules to play the other abandoned teams, and if someone loses out on a home game … tough luck?
Maybe theybuild in an extra week?I don’t know. That’s unclear.
A lot is unclear.
Another option Phillips advanced is deliberately leaving the regular season champion out of the championship game entirely.
Yes, the ACC might consider holding its conference championship game between the second-place and third-place teams in the conference, thereby protecting the record (and potential seeding) of whoever finishes in first place during the regular season.
“Do you play two versus three? 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,” Phillips said. “So you have a regular-season champion, and then you have a conference tournament or postseason champion.”
You read that right. That’s what Phillips said. Out loud. On the record.
“That’s one of the options; depending on how you treat the conference champions or that championship game, you may want to do it differently,” Phillips continued.
Yeah, like, do it differently every year based on how the rankings are going? Manipulate the system on the fly? Can you do that?
I don’t know what “park them to the side” means. I also don’t know how that would be universally advantageous on an annual basis.
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Based on what happened this year? Sure, it would’ve made sense to “park SMU to the side.”
They were the regular season champion at 11-1 (8-0) before losing to Clemson (9-3, 7-1) in the ACC title game. They were comfortably in the bracket before that game, then put themselves in peril of missing out on one of the seven at-large spots after Clemson soaked up the fifth conference title slot despite having three regular-season losses and a CFP ranking of 16.
It’s not going to be like that every year, though. Syracuse popped up out of nowhere and screwed up everything by beating Miami. This is a completely hysterical overreaction to one set of circumstances in the CFP’s first season. This is prisoner-of-the-moment stuff.
Let’s say that next year, a one-loss Clemson team will be the regular season champion, and we’ll say that the SEC, Big XII, and Big Ten all have unbeaten (or one loss) conference champs. Also, let’s presume Boise State is once again the next-best conference champ, but with two losses. The Tigers would be comfortably in as the fourth seed if they were to win the ACC title game over, say, a two-loss Pitt team or a two-loss Miami team.
But since Clemson would be “parked to the side” while Pitt beats Miami in the 2-3 quasi-championship game, does Pitt get the ACC title and a CFP bye while Clemson now has to play a first-round game? What if the other power schools all have second-place teams that are one-loss clubs as well, and Clemson isn’t just given the No. 5 seed, and the Tigers get a tough first-round draw?
Sure, they’d get a home game. But is that logical? Or does the regular season champ get the bid and the title game winner potentially get nothing? Who is the actual champion?
I get the grand vision in that eventuality. The ACC would essentially guarantee itself a second team in the tournament and not have to sweat out the selection committee’s decision like SMU did, but is that any more fair to the regular season champ in this scenario than forcing SMU to play a game it didn’t need this year?
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Or (and hear me out on this one), maybe 2025 is a down year in the conference. Maybe Pitt is like Arizona State was in the Big XII this year — ranked 12th in the CFP at 10-2 with one loss to Miami. That’s good for first place at the end of the regular season.
Let’s further assume the ACC winner is going to be the fifth conference champion to qualify, with Boise State and the other three power conference champs at one loss apiece. Then Miami beats Clemson in the “2-3” ACC title game, with both teams entering at 9-3.
Who is the ACC champ? Regular season Pitt at 10-2? Or Miami, the 2-3 title game winner at 10-3 with a regular season win over Pitt? Because in this scenario, the ACC is probably getting just one team in the bracket.
It feels like it should be Miami. Then again, you had the Panthers “parked to the side” to “protect” them from playing a conference championship game.
Is that something the ACC decides in advance? Will they just make it up as they go along in season? Does the College Football Playoff committee get to choose?
Regardless of how conference executives decide these answers, this feels convoluted, overly complicated and sacrificing competition in the name of greed and prestige to work the system in an effort to get as much revenue from the playoff as possible.
There needs to be uniformity within the conferences regarding how they determine champions. There needs to be uniformity within the conferences regarding how they schedule. Make it an eight-team playoff, not 12. Ditch the byes. Get two teams into a conference championship game. The winner goes to the playoff. The loser can keep its fingers crossed for one of the three wild cards along with Notre Dame.
Let’s clean this process up and simplify it. Take all those other dumb scenarios Phillips advanced and “park them to the side.”