Inside The Panthers

ACC Reveals New Tiebreaker Rules

With divisions gone, the ACC has released new rules for determining who will play in the football championship game.

Stephen Thompson

ACC Reveals New Tiebreaker Rules
ACC Reveals New Tiebreaker Rules /
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PITTSBURGH -- ACC football has retired the Atlantic and Coastal Divisions this season and replaced them with a pod scheduling model that will end with the teams with the two best records in the conference title game. 

But the threat of two or more teams ending with the season with the same record at the top of the ACC looms, so at their annual spring meetings in Amelia Island, Florida, conference officials have created 

extensive rules to settle tiebreakers. 

At the most basic level, the teams with the two best winning percentages in conference play will play on the first weekend of December in Charlotte, North Carolina at the Bank of America Stadium for the ACC title. 

In the case of a two-team tie for the second-best winning percentage, the first move is to turn to head-to-head competition, with the winner of that game holding the advantage. If there was no head-to-head competition, the next determinant is winning percentage against all common opponents. Then it moves to win percentage against common opponents with the added caveat of order of finish in the conference, beginning with the highest-seeded common opponents and moving downward in order of the standings. The fourth step is to factor in the combined winning percentage of a team's conference opponent, with the team who faced the better opponents gaining the advantage. 

After that, the league will factor in details not settled on the field. The fifth step will be for third-party SportSource Analytics to determine a Team Rating Score at the conclusion of regular season play and the team with a higher score will advance to the Championship Game. If all else fails, the commissioner of the league chooses the advancing team at random. 

If three or more teams are tied for the best record in the league, the first step is to determine a top seed. The league will do that first by considering head-to-head win percentage against all other tied teams if they are common opponents. Next, the tiebreaker becomes win percentage against all common opponents and continues through the same procedures as the two-team ties, all the way down to the random draw from the commissioner. This process proceeds until there are two teams determined to be the top two seeds.  

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Stephen Thompson
STEPHEN THOMPSON

Stephen Thompson graduated with a bachelor's degree in communications and political science from Pitt in April 2022 after spending four years as a sports writer and editor at The Pitt News, the University of Pittsburgh's independent, student-run newspaper.  He primarily worked the Pitt men's basketball beat, and filled in on coverage of football, volleyball, softball, gymnastics and lacrosse, in addition to other sports as needed. His work at The Pitt News has won awards from the Pennsylvania News Media Association and Associated College Press.  During the spring and summer of 2021, Stephen interned for Pittsburgh Sports Now, covering baseball in western Pennsylvania. Hailing from Washington D.C., family ties have cultivated a love of Boston's professional teams and Pitt athletics, and a fascination with sports in general.  You can reach Stephen by email at stephenethompson00@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter. Read his latest work:

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