ACC will weigh changes to its title game, commissioner says

ATLANTA – ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Sunday the league will have conversations between coaches and athletic directors about whether to make changes to its conference championship game format.

The talks are a result of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff and the importance of securing conference champions and the teams playing in conference championship games.

This past season, SMU entered the ACC Championship as the regular-season champion, but lost to Clemson in the ACC title game and had to sweat it out before selection day before earning a spot in the 12-team field.

Phillips said the ACC could consider giving its regular-season champion a bye and have the teams that finish second or third in the league play in the ACC championship game.

He said another option is to have the top 4 teams play on the final weekend of the regular season: first place vs. fourth place and second place vs. third place, with the winners playing the following weekend in the ACC championship game.

Phillips said he will have conversations with league head coaches on a conference call next week to get their feedback on the plan — specifically pointing to comments from SMU coach Rhett Lashlee leading up to the game, where he indicated the Mustangs might be better off not plays to protect his place in the field.

Phillips also said those conversations will continue at the league’s winter meetings next month in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he has mentioned this is a topic among the league’s athletic directors.

“The conference championship games are important as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips said. “Do you play two against three? You go through the regular season, and whoever wins the regular season, you just park them to the side, and then you play the second-place team against 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 might want to do it differently.

“I’ve alluded to it in some of our bi-weekly AD calls, and those are some of the things moving forward. We want to recap the regular season, the postseason, and what do we think going forward ? “