ACC will likely follow Big 12, scrap football divisional play
The 14-team Atlantic Coast Conference is considering scrapping divisional play for football, going to a scheduling model with three annual opponents.
The 3-5-5 model would include five games a year against non-annual opponents, with the other five ACC opponents on the schedule the following season.
Such a scheduling model immediately made me think of two things:
❚ Further endorsement of the Big 12’s decision to stage a conference championship game without divisional play. The Big 12 has been without divisions since the 2011 departures of Colorado and Nebraska, and the conference revived the title game in 2017, matching the top two teams in the standings.
❚ The Southeastern Conference and the Big 12 could consider something similar when both expand in the coming years. OU and Texas are headed for the SEC, which will have 16 members. And Cincinnati, Brigham Young, Central Florida and Houston are headed to the Big 12, probably for the 2023 season.
The original NCAA rule required that conferences needed at least 12 teams and two divisions to stage a conference title game. But the Big 12 received an exemption, and earlier this week, the NCAA Football Oversight Committee recommended eliminating the rule requiring divisions. The Division I Council is expected to approve the measure.
“The two, I think, drivers to this: One, is the opportunity for our student-athletes to play every school in the ACC over a four-year period of time,” commissioner Jim Phillips said during the league meetings in Amelia Island, Florida, last week, according to ESPN. “That’s just not the case right now.
“The other piece of it is, I’ve always felt that was a local decision about how you handle your conference. You’re seeing that across multiple conferences
“You want your two best teams to have a chance to play at the end of the year for a lot of reasons. So that’s why it’s taken us ... We’re really very much on track.” Jim Phillips, ACC commissioner, on divisional formats
that they’d like to dictate what their championship structure looks like, and which will lead into eventually an expanded football playoff.”
The gist of the latter? Get the top two teams in the league into the league championship game.
“You want your two best teams to have a chance to play at the end of the year for a lot of reasons,” Phillips said. “So that’s why it’s taken us ... you may think it’s a little bit longer, but it really isn’t. We’re really very much on track. But again, want to make sure we’ve talked to everybody to see, are we missing something here?”
The Big Ten also has discussed dissolving divisions. And the Big 12 provides an excellent case study.
In the five Big 12 Championship Games played under the no-division format, two have produced top-10 matchups (OU-Baylor in 2019, OSUBaylor in 2021). In the final nine Big 12 title games staged after a divisional format, only one produced a top-10 matchup (OU-Missouri 2007).
However, five of those years, a top-10 Big 12 team missed the championship game. And three times, the Big 12 title game included a team outside the top 25 (Colorado 2005, Colorado 2004, Texas 1996); in two of those years, a top-10 Big 12 team placed second in a division.
Miami’s Dan Radakovich, who has been an ACC athletic director since 2006, said ESPN will have some input but that he believes the conference is nearing an affirmative decision.
“We need to talk a little bit to our TV partners and see what they think and run it through the car wash one more time,” Radakovich said. “It’s not urgent to get it done right now because even if we decide to move this forward for 2023, there’s time to get it done.”
Of course, the biggest sticking point could be the distribution of permanent opponents. While some rivals are natural – for example, the four North Carolina schools (UNC, Duke, Wake Forest and North Carolina State) could all play annually – the others are not so obvious.
Clemson as an annual rival means a much tougher schedule. It also likely helps ticket sales. So there are a variety of variables.
Big 12 sources said divisional play is
preferred, but could the Big 12 adopt the model it helped pioneer?
SEC scheduling models have included both divisions and four-team pods, which is a variation of the ACC plan. Could the SEC go with a 3-6-6 model and forego divisional play?
In the Big 12, among the issues would be how to treat the four Texas schools. Would they be grouped together as annual rivals? The other 10 schools ostensibly would then play two Texas schools a year, making one trip annually into the Lone Star State.
Is that enough? Several schools have voiced a desire to have as much stateof-Texas presence as possible.
OSU has natural rivalries with Kansas State, Iowa State and Kansas, going back to old Big Eight days, but I don’t know that the Cowboys would embrace such annual assignments. OSU would prefer more Texas ties and perhaps a higher profile with newcomers Cincinnati, BYU and UCF.
As the ACC well knows, the politics of scheduling is a major thorn.
SEC sources already somewhat laid out the proposed annual rivalries – OU, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri in one pod; Texas A&M, Louisiana State and the Mississippi schools in another; the Alabama and Tennessee schools in a third; and South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Florida in a fourth.
Of course, that prevents annual games like A&M-Texas, Ole Miss-Alabama and Auburn-Georgia. The ACC plan would let the SEC adjust the pods to fit tradition.
For instance, Texas’ three annual rivals could be OU, A&M and Arkansas. OU’s three annual rivals could be A&M, Missouri and Texas. Missouri’s three annual rivals could be OU, Arkansas and Kentucky. Arkansas’ three annual rivals could be A&M, Texas and LSU. Alabama’s three natural rivals could be Auburn, Tennessee and Ole Miss. You get the idea.
One problem with non-divisional play is potential tiebreakers to reach the title game. The Big 12’s chief concern is a three-way tie in which each of the three
teams went 1-1 against the other tied teams. That happened twice in divisional play and was determined by Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings.
But two-team ties could be a problem without divisional play, since it’s more likely any two random teams did not meet. And using the College Football Playoff rankings is problematic, since that committee’s weekly meeting does not convene until Monday on that particular week. The BCS rankings were revealed on Sundays.
But the ACC’s proposal is intriguing. It makes the Big 12 and SEC at least consider the model, while also lauding the Big 12’s foresight that divisions are not necessary.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.