​CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The ACC revised its tiebreaker rules for determining conference championship game participants, commissioner Jim Phillips announced during the ACC Kickoff on Wednesday, July 15.According to a news release from the ACC, the three “guiding principles” will be:AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHead-to-head results will always matter most.No team will be overly rewarded or penalized based on the number of conference games it played.When head-to-head competition cannot separate tied teams, the team with the strongest overall body of work will earn the opportunity to compete for the ACC Championship and the conference’s automatic qualifier to the College Football Playoff.When asked how the strongest body of work will be determined, Phillips said the conference will use Sports Source Analytics, which is what the College Football Playoff committee uses, to determine each team’s success rankings.”Who you play, when you play, the games that you win, nonconference as well as conference, will matter. That’s a major change in college sports and certainly for the ACC,” Phillips said, adding that 10,000 different season outcomes were evaluated by the league’s athletic directors during a data-driven review. “We’ll continue to watch how this thing goes. But I feel incredibly strong that we have gotten to the right place with unanimity from our membership on what this new tiebreaking policy states.”The ACC is transitioning to a nine-game conference schedule, with 12 of its 17 football members playing nine league games while five teams play eight conference contests in 2026. Starting in 2027, only one team each season will play eight ACC games; that team will be required to schedule two nonconference Power Four opponents compared to one for its contemporaries.Louisville has only made the ACC championship game once, in 2023, head coach Jeff Brohm’s first season. The Cardinals lost to Florida State, 16-6.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementLast year, Duke, which had five regular-season losses, beat Virginia for the conference crown. Neither team was included in the College Football Playoff field; Miami was the conference’s sole representative. The Hurricanes made the national championship game before falling to undefeated Indiana.”What’s changed this year is that there’s an AQ (automatic qualifier) awarded for the Power Four conferences,” Phillips said. “So you have to do everything you can to position your championship game with those two best teams.”Here are other takeaways from Phillips’ commissioner forum:Phillips reiterated his support for the Protect College Sports Act, saying it “represents the best chance for Congress to assist college sports and address some of the major issues that plague it in the near term.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe added: “I don’t agree that it’s going to limit wages. What we want is more transparency about what’s happening. We want those deals, whether names are attached or not, we want those