The Atlantic Coast Conference has announced a new football championship tiebreaker policy that will take effect beginning with the 2026 season, reflecting the league’s transition to a nine-game conference schedule and ensuring a fair and equitable process for determining participants in the ACC Football Championship Game.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips told reporters during this week’s “Kickoff Days,” the updated tiebreaking procedure is built on three guiding principles:
Head-to-head results will always matter most.
No team will be overly rewarded or penalized based on the number of conference games it played.
When head-to-head competition cannot separate tied teams, the team with the strongest overall body of work will earn the opportunity to compete for the ACC Championship and the conference’s automatic qualifier to the College Football Playoff.
“A team’s success ranking from sports source analytics, we’ve used them in the past, it will be the third element of the tiebreaking system. It’s what the CFP uses. I think you have to go and give an opportunity to place your two best teams.”
“What’s changed this year is that there’s an AQ awarded for The Power Four conferences. So, you have to do everything you can to position your championship game with those two best teams,” he said.
The updated championship tiebreaker policy was developed to reward head-to-head results, while also identifying the two most deserving teams to compete for the ACC Football Championship and the conference’s automatic berth into the College Football Playoff.
“It will come down to body of work. Who you play, when you play, the games you win, conference and non-conference will matter. That’s a major change in college sports and certainly for the ACC,” Phillips said.
The revised policy was approved following a comprehensive review by the ACC’s Athletics Directors. The evaluation included more than 10,000 simulated season outcomes to ensure the model fairly addressed a wide range of championship scenarios.
The 2026 season also marks the beginning of the ACC’s move to a nine-game conference schedule and presents a unique transition year. Due to previously scheduled non-conference games against Power 4 opponents, five ACC institutions—Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech and North Carolina—will continue to play eight conference games in 2026. The league’s remaining 12 programs will play nine conference games while also facing one Power 4 non-conference opponent.
“Our schedule’s not perfect coming up this year because we’re going into that transition period where we’re going to nine games, we have an uneven number of teams in the conference. 12 of our schools will play nine conference games, five of our schools will play eight. Everyone will play 10 Power Four games, so there’s some balance there. We’ll continue to watch how this thing goes. But I feel incredibly strong that we have gotten to the right place with unanimity with our membership on what this new tiebreaking policy states,” Phillips said.
Beginning in 2027, the ACC’s 17-member football alignment will result in one institution each season playing an eight-game conference schedule on a rotating basis. That school will be required to schedule two Power 4 non-conference opponents, while the remaining 16 institutions will play nine conference games.
