Clemson Football: What happens if ACC Championship game is canceled?

Clemson football is set to take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the ACC Championship game

The Clemson football team is scheduled to take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish this coming Saturday in Bank of America Stadium for the ACC Championship.

That being said, it’s 2020 and anything can happen.

We’ve already noted how Clemson football and Notre Dame could potentially opt out of the game as a way to force the CFB Playoff committee’s hand, but then there’s fact that the Fighting Irish- who are undefeated at this point- almost have no incentive to play the game.

Notre Dame has a 100 percent chance of making the playoff if it stays undefeated without the conference championship, but that percentage drops- at least a hair- if the Irish play and lose to the Tigers, though they’d still likely get in.

So, it makes you wonder: What happens to Clemson football if the ACC Championship game is canceled?

With Notre Dame not having much incentive to play the game, what if the Fighting Irish were to experience some kind of an outbreak? Even in a normal week that they might want to play the game, they may elect to just move on and play the whole situation safe.

So, what happens if that’s the case?

Well, the ACC would be forced to either try and reschedule (which is basically impossible) or to crown a champion itself without the game being played. Since Notre Dame won the head-to-head matchup against the Tigers and the Fighting Irish have a perfect record, they’d be named the conference champion without ever having to play the rematch, right?

There’s no way the conference could award Clemson with the trophy if the Tigers were down a game in the standings and lost the head-to-head matchup. They could potentially crown co-champions, but that still wouldn’t seem likely because of the same reasons listed above.

And then there’s the CFB Playoff.

The playoff committee would certainly take Notre Dame- that’s an undefeated team, likely named the conference champion. And then there’s Clemson football.

Could the Tigers- with one loss- remain inside the top-four? They certainly should. The committee couldn’t fault Clemson for a cancellation as long as the Tigers were willing to play.

That creates a conundrum that would set off the rest of the conferences- especially the SEC- but it would be the right decision by the committee.

All that being said, it’s still 2020 and weird things have been happening all year. How do we know that the committee doesn’t somehow resort to punishing both the Tigers and Irish- especially Clemson?

We’re not expecting the game to be canceled, but it wouldn’t be surprising at all if it did happen. Hopefully we get to Saturday afternoon without any hiccups among either team, but as we all know: Saturday is a long time from now, especially in the world of playing CFB amidst the pandemic.