The ACC football championship picture is as crowded as it’s been in years, and Duke football is right in the middle of it.
Entering Week 12, the Blue Devils (5-4, 4-1 ACC) are one of five conference teams with one-loss, alongside Georgia Tech (5-1), Virginia (5-1), SMU (5-1) and Pitt (4-1). Their Week 12 foe is another one-loss team, with Virginia set to make its first trip to Wallace Wade Stadium since 2022 after the Cavaliers dropped their first ACC game last week, falling 16-9 to Wake Forest.
With only a few weeks remaining in the regular season, the race to play in Charlotte for an ACC title is shaping up to be a test of both performance and perception. The ACC’s no-division format means each team plays just eight conference games, and with 17 members, not every matchup is possible, leaving plenty of room for debate over who truly deserves a title shot.
“Bloated conferences forever are going to create this situation because everybody can’t play everybody,” Duke football coach Manny Diaz said on Monday, Nov. 10. “And this will not be a unique problem to our league.”
The ACC currently has tiebreaker policies in place for a two-team tie or a three-or-more team tie. If teams finish with the same record, the league first looks at head-to-head results, then win percentage against common opponents. Additional statistical measures from SportSource Analytics may be used if needed, with the final decision made by the commissioner or their designee if it comes down to it.
But even with the 12-team College Football Playoff format in place and only five automatic bids to give, the same debates will continue: Who gets in? Who’s left out? And how to fairly judge teams that never face each other.
“We’re going to continue to argue over three-loss teams and two-loss teams and who should be at large for a 12-team playoff,” Diaz said. “And of all the compelling arguments to go to the auto bids, that the conferences can form a playoff to create the auto bids, whether that’s what people want to do or not, that’s probably the only solution to this going forward.”
The uncertainty, too, will only continue.
“When you make a thing that we’re going to expand conferences and when you don’t pay attention to the unintended consequences, these are the unintended consequences,” Diaz said. “And it’s going to be the same every year where teams can’t play teams and we’re going to invite two to Charlotte or Atlanta or Indianapolis and hope that we pick the right two. But how will you know?”
Currently under the CFP format, the five automatic bids are extended to the five conference champions that are ranked highest by the CFP selection committee. That being said, even if Duke makes it to the ACC title game in December and comes out on top, the Blue Devils may not earn a bid to the playoffs.
“It’s all broken, it doesn’t make any sense,” Diaz said. “We’re not aligned with what we want at the end of the year and how we’re playing these conferences in this new normal of these bloated conferences. That wasn’t my first inkling of how to solve the playoff problem with the auto bids, but I don’t see any other way. And I don’t see this problem ever going away because the league schedules, you’re always going to have teams that don’t have a chance to play each other through the course of the year.”
Duke is set to kick off against Virginia at 3:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2.
Anna Snyder covers Duke for The Fayetteville Observer as part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at asnyder@gannett.com or follow her @annaesnydr on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Duke football in the middle of crowded ACC title race
