NCAA Relaxes Conference Championship Restrictions

ACC will now continue its plan to get rid of divisions

CLEMSON, S.C. — The Atlantic Coast Conference is happy. And likely so is every other Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) conference.

The NCAA’s Division I Council relaxed restrictions for FBS conference championship games on Wednesday. FBS conferences can now determine their championship game participants.

This is exactly what ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips was expecting when he told reporters from last week’s ACC Spring Meetings in Fernandina Beach, Fla., that the league was looking to do away with divisions and was moving to a 3-5-5 scheduling model.

“I’m confident we're gonna get to a decision," Phillips told the media at the time. “And either we’re going to do it or we’re not going to do it and then we’re not going to be talking about it.”

The 3-3-5 model means every ACC team will have three permanent league opponents and will rotate five different league schools on-and-off each year. From a Clemson standpoint, it means every ACC team will visit Memorial Stadium at least once every four years.

Whether or not this is done in time to affect the 2023 season remains to be seen, but the ACC appears to be the first league to really shake up its championship-deciding format in several years.

The Big Ten floated this idea of division-less football earlier this year, and the ACC has been discussing it for some time as well, but this is the first time an actual proposal has come up. And the league is wanting each team to have three permanent opponents with a rotation of five teams one season and the other five the following year.

Last month, the NCAA Football Oversight Committee formerly recommended to the NCAA Division I Council it adopt legislation to remove the FBS requirements for conference championship games.

The ACC got a feel for what a division-less league might look like in 2020, when Notre Dame was added for one year during the COVID season. The league was able to scrap its divisions that year and determined its championship participants based on the two squads that had the best record in the league.

The result was a top 5 match between No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 4 Clemson. The Tigers won the game, 34-10, capturing the program’s last of six straight ACC Championships.