ACC football accidentally stumbled upon brilliance

ACC football accidentally stumbled upon greatness in the midst of a global pandemic.

The ACC announced their changes for the 2020 college football season and stumbled upon the best thing to happen to the conference in decades. Despite the fact that John Swofford and the ACC Presidents have always been reactionary instead of visionaries, being reactionary is going to help the conference take a step forward.

As part of their COVID-19 2020 college football plans, the conference announced that they were going to take a page out of the Big XII book and get rid of divisions within the conference and play 10 conference games.

A brilliant decision from numerous standpoints, especially if you are Clemson.

Without divisions, the conference will take the two top teams in the conference standings after the 10 conference games have been played. As Clemson football continues to assert its dominance over the conference it helped to create, playing another ranked team in the ACC championship game, will help the perception of Clemson’s schedule.

Take a look at how different the ACC championship games would have looked over the last decade.

2012

• Original: Florida State vs Georgia Tech
• Top two teams: Florida State and Clemson

2013

• Original: Florida State vs Duke
• Top two teams: Florida State and Clemson

2014 – No change

• Original: Florida State vs Georgia Tech
• Top two teams: Florida State and Georgia Tech
  •  Georgia Tech and Clemson finished 6-2 in the ACC but the Yellow Jackets beat Clemson in Atlanta during the regular season

2015 – No Change

• Original: Clemson vs UNC
• Top two teams: Clemson and UNC

2016

• Original: Clemson vs Virginia Tech
• Top two teams: Clemson and Louisville

2017 – No change

• Original: Clemson vs Miami
• Top two teams: Clemson vs Miami

2018

• Original: Clemson vs Pittsburgh
• Top two teams: Clemson and Syracuse
  • Syracuse lost the head to head to Pittsburgh but were ranked in the Top 25 and a better win/loss record than Pittsburgh

2019 – No change

• Original: Clemson vs Virginia
• Top two teams: Clemson and Virginia

Applying these common-sense changes mean that Clemson would have played in seven of the last eight football championship games and would have gotten a chance to avenger their brutal October embarrassment at home to Florida State – not to say that the Tigers would have beaten the Seminoles, but it would have been a much better game the second time around.

Just as every blind squirrel eventually finds a nut, the ACC stumbled upon a great idea and even after the global pandemic is long gone, this is an idea that should be incorporated moving forward.