The ACC announced new football championship game tiebreakers on Wednesday, as they look to work with the new format starting in 2023.
The conference operated with two divisions starting in the 2005-06 season after they added Boston College and had 12 teams’ total. They named them the Atlantic and the Coastal divisions and the two teams that finished top of their division at the end of the regular season met in the ACC Championship game for the title.
The ACC Â got rid of the two divisions after the 2022 season and announced a different format that would allow teams in the other division more often than before.
The format is a 3-5-5 for the next four seasons starting in 2023 through 2026. A team will have three rivals they play home-and-away and then they play the other 10 teams in the conference home-and-away once over that time period. Pitt has Virginia Tech, Boston College and Syracuse for their rivals that they’ll play each year and then remaining 10 teams they’ll play at home once and away once during that time frame.
The conference getting rid of the divisions means that the two teams with the best record at the end of the regular season will face off for the ACC Championship game.
The new format means that there are many new tiebreakers that have the potential to come into play. The ACC will use the highest winning percentage, after any tiebreaker, to decide who the No. 1 seed is for the Championship game.
If there is a two-team tie for a spot in the ACC Championship game, there are six different tie-breakers available to break the deadlock.
- Head-to-head competition between the two tied teams.
- Win-percentage versus all common opponents.
- Win-percentage versus common opponents based upon their order of finish (overall conference win-percentage, with ties broken) and proceeding through other common opponents based upon their order of finish.
- Combined win-percentage of conference opponents.
- The tied team with the higher ranking by the Team Rating Score metric provided by SportSource Analytics following the conclusion of regular season games.
- The representative shall be chosen by a draw as administered by the Commissioner of Commissioner’s designee.
If there is a three or more team-tie for a spot in the ACC Championship game, there are seven tiebreakers to decide the teams. The ACC will use these tiebreakers to first pick a representative for the Championship game and then once they determine a team, they will use the tiebreakers again for the remaining teams.
- Combined head-to-head win-percentage among the tied teams if all tied teams are common opponents.
- If all the tied teams are not common opponents, the tied team that defeated each of the other tied teams.
- Win-percentage versus all common opponents.
- Win-percentage versus common opponents based upon their order of finish (overall conference win-percentage, with ties broken) and proceeding through other common opponents based upon their order of finish.
- Combined win-percentage of conference opponents.
- The tied team with the highest ranking by the Team Rating Score metric provided by SportSource Analytics following the conclusion of regular season games.
- The representative shall be chosen by a draw as administered by the Commissioner of Commissioner’s designee.
The ACC will apply these tiebreakers from No. 1 through the last one as needed to determine who makes it to the ACC Championship Game and also seeding. The ACC will also count conference games against post-season ineligible teams in the standings and with tiebreakers.
