The doomsday scenario for the ACC – as popular college football talking head Josh Pate called it – did not ultimately come to pass on Sunday, as the conference ended up getting representation in the College Football Playoff with the Miami Hurricanes earning the No. 10 seed in the field over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

However, the ACC’s own handling of the situation shouldn’t be excused just because the selection committee had the courage to do what was right and flip Notre Dame with Miami for the last spot in the field in their final rankings.

The ACC’s 2025 football season ended in Charlotte in a fitting way after Duke defeated Virginia 27-20 in overtime – with a five-loss champion celebrating in a sparsely filled Bank of America Stadium with no way of getting in. And it should have looked a lot differently.

The ACC’s tiebreakers and scheduling have to be under the microscope after an embarrassing fallout from championship game

The Virginia Cavaliers were the conference’s regular season champions at 10-2 (7-1), and they were the only one-loss team in ACC play. Well, sort of. They faced NC State early in the season in a game that was considered to be a non-conference game because it was beyond the eight ACC game schedule. And, uh, Virginia lost that game to the Wolfpack 35-31. Just to add another layer of odd on top of this whole thing.

Duke, Miami, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, and SMU all finished tied for second at 6-2. However, based on the league’s established tiebreakers, Duke got the slight nod due to a higher overall conference win percentage. 7-5 Duke, which lost to UConn and Tulane and got blown out by Illinois at home. 7-5 Duke that didn’t play Miami, SMU, or Pitt and lost to Virginia and Georgia Tech. Seven. And. Five. Did I mention 7-5?

Allowing a five-loss team who went 0-2 against the top five teams in the league around them was an indictment of a terribly unbalanced scheduling format and a bad tiebreaker system. There’s no easy fix when it comes to the scheduling. As we continue further towards supersized uber-conference world, schedules aren’t going to be balanced with so many teams absent divisions, and since the ACC just moved away from them, it’s hard to see them going back any time soon.

But a simple fix with the tiebreaker would have avoided disaster this year and could avoid it in the future. The American Conference uses CFP rankings to help determine the conference title game participants where head-to-head isn’t determinative. And while some argue that the final rankings don’t come out until Tuesday, the American has a system to where as long as the highest ranked team doesn’t lose on the final weekend of the regular season, the rankings control.

To the extent that’s not implemented, perhaps going to best overall record would be useful. After all, those tend to fall in line to some degree with the teams higher up in the CFP rankings. And it would have avoided the embarrassment of seeing a five-loss Duke team celebrating and raising the conference’s banner on Saturday night while the executives sweated missing out on a playoff spot and potentially millions of dollars.

The ACC needs to act quickly and make tweaks to avoid something like this playing out again. And perhaps that anxiety from Saturday night through Sunday morning will help said improvements get made much sooner than later.

College Football

The playoff committee’s decision regarding Miami vs. Notre Dame should create a ripple effect that is a true positive for the sport moving forward

The Canes’ early season win over the Irish carried the day on Sunday.

Craig Smith