We already knew that the 2024 college football season would be unlike any other for the Atlantic Coast Conference. With a footprint that now touches Texas and California, the ACC and its new 17-team league were making conference history with 2024 no matter what happened in the title race.
But now 2024 will also be notable because Year 1 of this division-less, 17-team structure has produced a fascinating conference title race. The potential outcomes require a solid grasp on the ACC’s tiebreaker procedures, which could get complicated in the most chaotic of scenarios.
Theoretically, Miami, Clemson and SMU could all finish with 8-0 conference records at the end of the regular season. This never could have happened with division play, and so fans are starting to grasp the idea that a team with an undefeated conference record could get left out of the conference championship game.
So, who gets the bid in that scenario? That answer is totally out of the hands of the contenders.
As it stands right now, if Miami, Clemson and SMU all finish with 8-0 records, the deciding tiebreaker would likely be the winning percentage of each team’s conference opponents in conference games. Essentially, it works as a strength of schedule comparison, calculating the conference wins and losses of every team you’ve played as a way to judge a team’s worthiness to play for the conference championship.
We have only reached this place because the unique combination of Miami, Clemson and SMU and their schedules have us blowing through tiebreaker scenarios Nos. 1-4 pretty quickly. There’s no head-to-head among the tied teams since they don’t play each other, and in this scenario they would all have the same winning percentage against their common opponents, which are Florida State and Louisville.
It is important to note that the exercise to follow is hinging on two of the biggest games on the Week 10 college football schedule. To engage with this tiebreaker projection is to assume that Clemson and SMU will both hold serve at home against tough challenges from Louisville and Pitt, respectively — and more on the Panthers later. If Clemson and/or SMU lose on Saturday, the triple 8-0 potential is obviously done. But since we are just 11 wins away from seeing this predicament, it’s worth exploring how it plays out and what it says about title races in the super conference era.
Rooting for your schedule
Knowing that an opponents’ winning percentage could decide a team’s championship fate has brought about a conundrum for college football fans. Rooting for an opponent is not common; most fans lean towards apathy except for the passion aimed at rivals, which is never in support. Yet, based on the looks of things, the results of a dozen different ACC conference games remaining on the schedule — none of which involve Miami, Clemson and SMU — could decide the tiebreaker in the case of a three-way tie at 8-0.
Below, we’ve put together some opponents’ winning percentage profiles and rooting interests for key games that could contribute to the best-case winning percentage of each team’s opponents. If every key game listed has a favorable result for that team, it would finish with what we’re calling a “best-case projection” in the opponents’ winning percentage tiebreaker. We’re going to start with Clemson, because while Miami is the only one that is undefeated overall, the Tigers are technically in first place in the standings with more wins than anyone else in the conference.
Clemson (5-0)
Wins: NC State (1-3), Stanford (1-4), Florida State (1-6), Wake Forest (2-2), Virginia (2-3)
Remaining: Louisville (3-2), Virginia Tech (3-1), Pitt (3-0)
Opponent Wins % Currently: 16-21
Opponent Wins % Best Case Projection: 32-32
Best-case projection key games:
- Florida State over North Carolina (Nov. 2)
- Virginia Tech over Syracuse (Nov. 2)
- Wake Forest over Cal (Nov. 8)
- NC State over Duke (Nov. 9)
- Wake Forest over North Carolina (Nov. 16)
- Louisville over Stanford (Nov. 16)
- NC State over Georgia Tech (Nov. 21)
- Stanford over Cal (Nov. 23)
- Virginia Tech over Duke (Nov. 23)
- NC State over North Carolina (Nov. 30)
- Wake Forest over Duke (Nov. 30)
- Pitt over Boston College (Nov. 30)
Miami (4-0)
Wins: Virginia Tech (3-1), Cal (0-4), Louisville (3-2), Florida State (1-6)
Remaining: Duke (2-2), Georgia Tech (3-3), Wake Forest (2-2), Syracuse (2-2)
Opponents Win % Currently: 16-22
Opponents Win % Best Case Projection: 30-34
Best case projection key games:
- Florida State over North Carolina (Nov. 2)
- Duke over NC State (Nov. 9)
- Syracuse over Boston College (Nov. 9)
- Louisville over Stanford (Nov. 16)
- Wake Forest over North Carolina (Nov. 16)
- Georgia Tech over NC State (Nov. 21)
- Louisville over Pitt (Nov. 23)
- Cal over Stanford (Nov. 23)
- Virginia Tech over Virginia (Nov. 30)
SMU (4-0)
Wins: Florida State (1-6), Louisville (3-2), Stanford (1-4), Duke (2-2)
Remaining: Pitt (3-0), Boston College (1-3), Virginia (2-3), Cal (0-4)
Opponents Win % Currently: 13-24
Opponents Win % Best Case Projection: 28-36
Best-case projection key games:
- Florida State over North Carolina (Nov. 2)
- Stanford over NC State (Nov. 2)
- Cal over Wake Forest (Nov. 8)
- Duke over NC State (Nov. 9)
- Boston College over Syracuse (Nov. 9)
- Cal over Syracuse (Nov. 16)
- Duke over Virginia Tech (Nov. 22)
- Boston College over North Carolina (Nov. 23)
- Duke over Wake Forest (Nov. 30)
- Virginia over Virginia Tech (Nov. 30)
The Pitt of it all
Returning to the present, we find a Pitt team that is also undefeated in ACC play but with more work left to do carrying a 3-0 record. The Panthers will play a huge role in who plays for the ACC championship in December, playing at SMU this weekend and host Clemson on Nov. 16. All of these tiebreaker scenarios are with the assumption that Pitt will lose both, but Pat Narduzzi’s squad should not be discounted so easily as they pursue their second ACC title in a four-year span.
IF Pitt wins one, or both, of those opportunities against the three teams ahead in the standings, it will likely return us to square one when it comes to breaking ties and deciding who gets to play for the ACC title at the end of the year. For the record, those tiebreakers are:
- Head-to-head competition, or in the case of a three-way tie head-to-head record against other tied teams
- Win percentage versus common opponents
- Win percentage versus common opponents based on their order of finish (breaking ties based on results against the best teams in the standings)
- Combined win percentage of conference opponents
- Team with the higher rankings according to a Team Rating Score metric released at the conclusion of the regular-season games
- A draw administered by the ACC Commissioner or Commissioner’s designee
And Pitt’s not the only team that still has a shot at making the ACC Championship Game. The Panthers also have a game against Louisville left on the schedule that could be key in a tiebreaker because the Cardinals are a common opponent for Miami, Clemson and SMU. Virginia Tech also has a path, but it requires winning out (beating Clemson along the way) and some serious help with results elsewhere. And if Louisville beats Clemson and Pitt and gets every single possible best case result on the way, maybe the Cards find themselves back in the mix again.
All of this chaos is the result of trying to use the old process for a new age of college football conferences. There have been 16- and 18-team conferences before, sure, but in those days every team that tied for first place got to claim a championship. There were not championship game spots or College Football Playoff automatic bids on the line. The conference championship games have never had more stakes than they do in the current postseason format because they reward conference champions with a bye, and yet we have a potential scenario in which a team could do everything it’s asked to do and still be left out from that opportunity.
But the key word is “potential.” For as many times as any of us have run the chaos scenario in late October or early November, the college football mantra “it’ll all work itself out” usually plays out with the actual results on the field. And the ACC may be hoping that’s the case, because anything would be cleaner than rooting for your opponents.
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