ACC Commissioner on When Conference Will Remove Divisions
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PITTSBURGH -- The Pittsburgh Panthers might get just one more shot at defending their ACC Coastal Division crown. According to reports from the conference's spring meetings, the ACC coaches and athletic directors are considering scrapping the two-division model for it's regular season football schedule.
Loosened NCAA rules have allowed each conference to determine their championship format for themselves, instead of being bound to the division model if they want to play a title game. And on Tuesday, Miami athletic director Dan Radokovich said the ACC was preparing for life after divisions, but on Wednesday, commissioner Jim Phillips was much less definitive.
"We're not under any time constraint. We know what we're gonna do in 2022, so this would be about 2023 and beyond."
Phillips added that this week has been about gathering input from the coaches and athletic directors on any potential changes and the next step is talking through the details with ESPN, the conference's sole television partner.
"What does [eliminating divisions] do from a television standpoint? Is that something that's attractive for ESPN? We'll decide whether or not we want to do it but we also want to get their input as well."
Phillips outlined the argument in favor of a division-less conference -- it would allow the athletes to visit every ACC school over their four years and create some more balanced championship game matchups by guaranteeing that the two teams with the best records play one another. That could be a deciding factor in the selection of the College Football Playoff field, which is also expected to expand in the near future.
"I think the two drivers to this are, one the opportunity for our student athletes to play every school in the ACC over a four-year period of time," Phillips said. "And I think you want your two best teams to play at the end of the year for a lot of reasons.
But Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi said during an interview with the ACC Network on Thursday that there is inherent value in playing the same teams every year and allowing someone to hoist a trophy at the end of the regular season, points that Phillips echoed in his press conference on Wednesday.
Going hand-in-hand with a change to the division format would be a restructuring of the regular season schedule. Current rules demand that each team play all six division opponents, a natural rival from the opposite division and another cross-divisional team that is determined on a rotating basis.
Phillips said that, if the league does adopt a different format, it would follow a 3-3-5 model that gives each team three opponents to play every year while the remaining five games are chosen from the rest of the conference.
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