ACC is considering a title game change that could impact the Clemson-Carolina game

The Atlantic Coast Conference is considering changes to its annual ACC Championship Game format. At least that’s the idea Commissioner Jim Phillips presented to the media on Sunday as the nation prepares for the College Football Playoff National Championship Game on Monday night.

Phillips said in a report from ESPN that the ACC could consider giving its regular-season champion a bye and letting the teams that finish second or third in the league standings play in the ACC Championship Game.

“The conference championship games are important as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips said in the article. “Are you playing two against three? You go through the regular season and whoever wins the regular season, just put them on the side and then play the second place team against the third place team in your championship game. So there is a regular season champion and then a conference tournament or postseason champion.

“That’s one of the options. Depending on how you treat the conference champions or the championship game, you might want to do it differently.”

What is the other option?

According to the report, Phillips’ other option is for the league to consider the possibility of having the top four teams play in an ACC playoff on the final weekend of the regular season. In this scenario, the first place player would play the fourth place player and the second place player would play the third place player.

The two winners would face each other in the ACC Championship game the following weekend.

“I’ve touched on this in some of our biweekly AD calls, and those are some of the things going forward,” Phillips said. “We want to do a review of the regular season and the postseason and what do we think about the future?”

Phillips plans to get a feel from the league’s head coaches on a conference call next week. The idea stems from Rhett Lashlee’s comments before the ACC Championship Game.

Lashlee said SMU might be better off not playing in the title game to protect its ranking. At that point, the Mustangs were ranked No. 8 in the CFP rankings. After the loss to Clemson, they fell to 11th and barely made it into the CFP.

Obviously, adding two playoff games to the ACC season could give the conference two more revenue streams and add a little more spice to the conference’s regular season, which could also increase revenue. All of these things could definitely impact potential television revenue.

However, in this scenario, the ACC needs to resolve some issues to make it work. First of all, how does the league handle scheduling? Does every team leave the schedule empty in the final week of the season?

Obviously in this scenario the league would have to schedule games based on seeding, and since Notre Dame is not a football member, a team will have a gap in its schedule because football has 17 members. Most likely, the last-place team in the conference standings will be left out.

Another issue is the ACC’s annual rivalry games against the SEC. Clemson-South Carolina, Florida State-Florida, Georgia Tech-Georgia and Louisville-Kentucky are all currently playing in the final week of the regular season.

What happens to these games? It’s not as easy as just moving them.

For example, if the ACC wants to postpone the Clemson-South Carolina game, South Carolina will have to clear this with the SEC because the league hosts all conference and non-conference games. The SEC might not want to mess with this.

Does this also mean the ACC will use a nine-game schedule in conference play, meaning everyone still gets four home and four away games and the top eight teams get one final home game to close out the regular season?

How will the ACC handle this, especially when it also has to factor in rivalry games? At least for the Clemson-South Carolina game, the Tigers’ home schedule is set for years when they host the Gamecocks and years when they don’t, with the goal of hosting a seventh home game to increase revenue increase.

In other words, Clemson doesn’t want to lose a home game if the ACC switches to a nine-game schedule in the years it plays South Carolina in Columbia.

Then there’s a bye for the regular-season champion and play against the second- and third-place teams in the title game. The goal is to potentially allow the ACC to have two teams in the playoffs each year, but there is no guarantee that will be the case in the 12-team playoffs.

It could be a possibility if the playoff field expands, but there’s no guarantee of anything at this point.

But first, Phillips needs to talk to his head coaches and from there the talks will continue at the league’s winter meetings next month in Charlotte, North Carolina, which he mentioned is already a topic among the league’s athletics directors.