After Miami dropped their second ACC game Thanksgiving Weekend to Syracuse, that put the ACC in a tough spot when it came to the new 12-team College Football Playoff. With SMU running the table at 8-0, the Hurricanes’ loss opened the door for Clemson to be the Mustangs’ opponent in the ACC Championship Game in Charlotte on Dec. 7.

Unless the Tigers were able to pull the upset of SMU, one thing was clear, the ACC was only getting one team in the CFP. In typical Dabo Swinney fashion, Clemson pulled the upset with a field goal as time expired to lock up the automatic conference bid. That left one question for the CFP committee, would they leave SMU out of the expanded field despite losing the conference title game and running through the regular season undefeated?

In the end, they put the Mustangs in the field along with Clemson, but it appears that ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is looking to possibly make some changes to their Championship Game, and in all honestly, it sounds ridiculous.

ACC weighing insane changes to football championship game

Andrea Adelson of ESPN reported on Sunday night that Phillips will have conversations with his conference coaches and athletic directors about potentially making changes to the championship game format. And honestly, it sounds extremely overthought.

According to Adelson, Phillips is weighing the option of giving the regular season champ a bye and having the second and third-place finishers play in the championship game. He cited the comments from SMU coach Rhett Lashlee about his team maybe being better off not playing in the conference title game to ensure a CFP berth.

“The conference championship games are important, as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips said. “Do you play two versus three? You go through the regular season and whoever wins the regular season, just park them to the side, and then you play the second-place team versus the third-place team in your championship game. So you have a regular-season champion, and then you have a conference tournament or postseason champion.”

I mean, what are we doing here? This is one of the most silly suggestions that Phillips could come up with. However, with it being the ACC, who knows what actually might end up happening. Already a punching bag of jokes for the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 in terms of results on the field, this would make even more of a mockery of the conference. If this gets any traction, then help us all.