CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In the wake of last year's chaotic five-way tie atop the standings, changes are coming to the ACC Championship Game tiebreaker procedure, the conference announced Wednesday.
The news came during the commissioner's forum, which kicked off the ACC Football Kickoff media days event. ACC leader Jim Phillips first introduced the guiding principles for the new procedure, which aim to simplify the process while also providing the most likely path to allowing the two best teams to play in the ACC Championship Game.
This is particularly important given the current College Football Playoff qualification rules, which allow each of the power conferences to send one automatic qualifier to the CFP field. The ACC wants to make sure the two teams that show up in Charlotte to play its league title have the best chance to represent the conference in the national championship race. The previous tiebreaker procedures had the league relying on a complicated "combined winning percentage of conference opponents" metric that drew attention away from the quality of the teams in the title race.
Defining a new tiebreaker procedure is particularly important for the ACC in 2026 as it moves to a new conference schedule in which some teams will play eight conference games while others will play nine. As such, the definition of "tied teams" includes not just squads with identical records but also those with the same number of conference wins or losses.
So if one team is 7-2 and another 7-1, they could be considered "tied" for the purposes of the tiebreaker process. This was done, Phillips explained, to both make sure that teams are not punished or helped by having more or fewer conference games than another.
Here's a summary of the new ACC tiebreaker procedure, which can be found in full here:
In the event of a two-team tie
- Step 1: Head-to-head results
- Step 2: Team Success Ranking (team rating provided to the league at the conclusion of all regular season games)
- Step 3: Commissioner Draw
In the event of a three-team (or more) tie, and all teams are common opponents
- Step 1: Team with the best record among head-to-head results between the tied teams. This moves one team forward, and the tiebreaker procedures continue with two (or more) teams as necessary.
- Step 2: Team Success Ranking
- Step 3: Commissioner Draw
In the event of a three-team (or more) tie, and the teams are not common opponents
- Step 1: A tied team with wins against other tied teams move forward. Tied teams with losses against other tied teams move back. Tiebreaker procedure continue with two (or more) teams as necessary.
- Step 2: Team Success Ranking
- Step 3: commissioner Draw
Last season, Duke made to the ACC Championship Game with a 7-5 overall record and a 6-2 mark in ACC play as a result of winning the five-way tie for second place. This was made possible after Cal's upset of SMU in the last week of the season dropped the Mustangs from a potential ACC title game appearance to the logjam of teams at 6-2. So while the ACC finished the year with seven different teams logging nine or more wins, the "combined winning percentage of conference opponents" tiebreaker had a seven-win team playing for the conference title.
Of course, Duke flipped the narrative on its head with a win over first-place Virginia to claim the ACC Championship, but the importance of cleaning up the process has increased amid changes to the College Football Playoff. Now that the ACC has an automatic qualifier to the bracket, these new tiebreaker rules should increase the likelihood that the teams competing for the conference title are receiving the most attention in the national title race.
