ACC Football Schedule Change Will Have Impact on College Football Playoff: ACC Daily

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips announced that the ACC is moving ahead after a vote by its member institutions' athletic directors to play nine conference games.

Sep 1, 2025; Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA; ACC Commisioner Jim Phillips with ESPN analist Nick Saban before the game at Kenan Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-Imagn Images | Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

On Monday, all 17 athletic directors in the Atlantic Coast Conference voted on a scheduling change that would require every team in the conference to play a nine-game conference schedule annually, along with a minimum of 10 games against Power Four competition, which passed.

Presumably to enhance overall competition between the conference, which is considered a Power Four conference—leading to more national coverage of the ACC and possibly a higher chance for programs in the conference to be selected for the College Football Playoff (CFP) due to FPI (Football Power Index), which measures team strength by schedule—Phillips said that the proposal was "overwhelmingly" supported.

ACC Football ADs vote in favor of a regular-season schedule that includes 9 conference games and a minimum of 10 games each year against P4 opponents.

Statement from ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, Ph.D.: pic.twitter.com/5XPe4GVoa3

— ACC Football (@ACCFootball) September 22, 2025

This scheduling change mirrors the Southeastern Conference’s model, which is composed of a nine-game conference schedule as well, including having SEC teams play against three permanent conference opponents while rotating the remaining six, that was passed in August and will go into effect in 2026. The Big Ten and Big 12 conferences already play a nine-game schedule.

“This positions the ACC as one of only two leagues committed to having every team annually play a minimum of 10 games against Power 4 teams,” Phillips said. “There will be additional discussions and more details to be determined, but today's decision showcases the commitment and leadership of our ADs in balancing what is best for strengthening the conference and their respective programs."

"As specified in the Conference constitution, the model will be presented to the Faculty Athletics Representatives for formal adoption."

On the surface, if ACC programs are going to remain competitive in national recruiting and as national contenders for the CFP, this proposal makes perfect sense.

However, the only factor that will dictate if Phillips' proposal translates into success for the the conference—meaning that more teams from the ACC will be considered by the selection committee to reach the CFP—is if teams from the conference continue to foster competitive programs and make an impression on the NCAA by beating non-conference opponents on a consistent basis.

This is why the scheduling change is a bit confusing. Now that there is a priority for intra-conference scheduling—nine games is equivalent to 75 percent of the season—those non-conference games against Power-Four teams outside of the ACC will have major implications for the competitiveness of the conference itself.

If the majority of ACC teams lose games on a regular basis in their non-conference slate, that could be detrimental for the ACC as a whole. In this sense, Phillips, along with all 17 athletic directors, is betting on the entire conference to remain as one of college football’s most dominant, which has not entirely been the case in the past.

The last time a team from the ACC won a National Championship was Clemson in 2018, and only two of the past 11 National Champions—dating back to 2014, when the CFP was instituted—have come from the ACC. 

Both titles were won by the Tigers under head coach Dabo Swinney. Clemson is currently 1-3 this season with an 0-2 conference record after coming into the year ranked in the Preseason AP Top-24 Poll as the No. 4 team in the country.

More details about the actual fallout of this scheduling change will be determined in the future, according to Phillips, especially pertaining to rivalry games which are frequently played between teams in the ACC against out-of-conference opponents, such as Florida State and Florida, Miami and Florida, Clemson and South Carolina, Pittsburgh and Penn State, and others.

But keeping the conference schedule at eight games with a conference-wide commitment to play a minimum of 10 games against Power Four teams, or Notre Dame—an Independent which is perennially ranked among the top-25 teams in the nation—might have been the clearer path to establishing teams from the ACC as annual contenders for the CFP.