The ACC made the overdue fix to its tiebreaker system on Wednesday, announcing a new football championship tiebreaker policy that begins with the 2026 season. The change arrives as the ACC moves into a nine-game conference schedule and tries to avoid the messy, hard-to-explain title race that defined the end of last season.
ACC athletics directors approved the revised policy after a review that included more than 10,000 simulated season outcomes.
ACC’s new tiebreaker policy to determine ACC title game teams pic.twitter.com/FEVs7m4Bdr
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) July 15, 2026
ACC finally changes the tiebreaker system that made Miami's path harder than it needed to be
Late last season, the ACC published a long list of clinching scenarios involving Miami, Duke, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, SMU and Virginia. Miami's path included combinations of wins, losses and, in some scenarios, finishing higher than Georgia Tech and SMU in the SportSource Analytics ranking. It was a very complicated system that confused most fans, and it made the ACC look like it didn't know what it was doing.
Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich said after last season that the ACC needed to look at other options and he certainly wasn't alone.
Win percentage is a major part of the new policy
The new policy starts with conference winning percentage, but it accounts for teams playing a different number of ACC games. The ACC's policy says the top two teams include the teams with the highest conference winning percentage and teams that played an alternate number of conference games but have either the same number of conference wins or the same number of conference losses as the teams with the highest winning percentage.
12 ACC teams will play nine conference games this season. Five teams — Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech and North Carolina — will play eight because of previously scheduled Power Four non-conference games. Beginning in 2027, one ACC team will play eight conference games each year on a rotating basis while the other 16 teams play nine.
Miami is one of the 12 teams playing nine ACC games in 2026. The Hurricanes' conference schedule includes home games against Boston College, Duke, Florida State, Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech, plus road games against Clemson, North Carolina, Stanford and Wake Forest.
The new ACC tiebreaker
In a two-team tie, head-to-head decides it first. If the tied teams did not play or cannot be separated, the team with the better ranking in the SportSource Analytics Team Success Ranking gets the spot. If that still does not settle it, the commissioner or a designee conducts a draw.
For three or more tied teams, the policy separates the process into two categories. If every tied team played every other tied team, the best record within that group comes first. If that does not settle it, SportSource Analytics is next before a draw.
If the tied teams did not all play each other, a team that defeated each of the other tied teams is placed into the championship game and removed from the tie. A team that lost to each of the other tied teams is removed from the tie. If needed, the process restarts with the remaining tied teams. If head-to-head results still do not settle it, SportSource Analytics becomes the next separator.
These changes should have happened before last year's chaos, but at least now the ACC has a system that better fits the conference it has become.
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