ACC will weigh changes to conference title game

ATLANTA — ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Sunday that the league will have conversations among coaches and athletic directors about whether to make changes to its conference championship game format moving forward.

The conversations come as a result of an expanded 12-team playoff, and ensuring conference champions and the teams that play in conference championship game remain important.

This past season, SMU entered the ACC championship game 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 standings play in the ACC championship game.

He also said another possibility is having the Top 4 teams play on the final weekend of the regular season: First-place versus 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 SMU coach Rhett Lashlee made leading up to the game in which he indicated the Mustangs might be better off simply not playing to protect its spot in the field.

Phillips also said these conversations will continue at the league’s winter meetings next month in Charlotte, and he has already begun to mention this is a topic with league athletics directors.

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

“I have alluded to that in some of our every other week AD calls, and these are some of the things moving forward. We want to have a recap of the regular season, postseason, and what do we think moving forward?”