Jeff Brohm Louisville team

Jeff Brohm and the Louisville football team run onto the field before their 2024 season opener against Austin Peay at L&N Stadium on August 31, 2024.

 ERIC CRAWFORD

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The first 12-team College Football Playoff concluded Monday night, and, by Tuesday morning, the suggestion box was stuffed with ideas to improve the product.

Stop automatically giving the four highest CFP seeds to conference champions. Play the first and second rounds on campus sites. Tighten the schedule so the title game is played earlier than Jan. 20.

All to be determined.

But playoff administrators are not the only ones considering changes. Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner Jim Phillips needs to sharpen the prospects for his league in its challenging battle with the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences.

Over the last week Phillips shared several ideas the league will consider:

*Giving the regular-season champion a bye and matching the second- and third-place teams in the ACC title game in Charlotte.

A similar idea is being discussed by other conferences.

*Having the league's No. 1 and No. 4 teams as well as the Nos. 2 and 3 teams play in the final week of the regular season, with the winners advancing to the ACC title game.

That one is outside the box, a different way of approaching the post-season.

The goal, of course, would be to boost the league's chances of getting as many teams as possible into the 12-team field. I salute the brain-storming and debate. Making the ACC format different would bring ACC attention it needs.

But there are questions, questions, questions.

I like Phillips' idea of rewarding the regular-season champion. Showing dominance over eight games is a greater accomplishment than being the best team over 60 minutes.

But … you'd would have to designate in advance which team would be given the ACC's automatic playoff slot. That's how it works in basketball. The conference tournament winner automatically goes to the NCAA Tournament, In leagues that typically earn only one bid, the regular-season champ often gets burned.

If you said it was the regular-season champ, a second-place team that was on the bubble could be knocked out of consideration with a loss in the ACC title game. And if the third-place team already had a pair of losses, they would not be a playoff lock by beating the league's second-place team.

If you designated the conference title game as the playoff participant, the regular season champ could be vulnerable if it was a team that had a bad non-conference loss on its resume.

Translation: You could cost your team a spot.

If Phillips' idea was in play this season, its impact would have been minimal.

SMU would have bypassed the ACC title game —and made the playoff anyway because the Mustangs earned a spot in December even after losing the ACC title game to Clemson.

In the changed format, Clemson would have played Miami, not SMU. Regardless, only the Tigers or the Hurricanes, not both teams, would have made the playoff.

Net result: Still 2 ACC teams in the field.

The second idea is more intriguing and challenging. Matching the first- and fourth-place teams as well as the second- and third-place teams in the final weekend of the regular season with the winners advancing to the ACC title game.

This season, that would have created a Clemson-Miami game in one semifinal. The other game would have matched 8-0 SMU against one of the four teams that finished 5-3 in league play — Louisville, Duke, Syracuse and Georgia Tech.

Don't ask me how they would have settled a fourth-place tiebreaker, but a Louisville-SMU rematch would have given Jeff Brohm's team a chance to ride its late-season momentum into the ACC title game. The Cards were capable of handling the Mustangs.

But unless Phillips is considering adding another week to the season, that format would require complete flex scheduling.

Non-conference games would have to bumped off the final weekend of the regular season. No more Governor's Cup finale. No more Clemson-South Carolina finale. No more Florida-Florid State or Georgia-Georgia Tech. That's a ton of tradition to consider.

A team or even two would be at risk of losing revenue from a home game. How would you fill out the schedule for teams sitting outside the top four spots in the league?

If the idea is to add an extra game for those four teams, that would require eliminating bye weeks as well as putting players in position to play 12 regular-season games, two ACC post-season playoff games and as many as four College Football Playoff games.

I'm not a math major, but that's 18 games. That's NFL stuff. That's a big ask — for players and fans.

The discussions will continue. But the ACC must continue to focus on overall improvement.

Clemson and SMU made the 2024 playoff and exited after one game. Both the Tigers (14-point loser to Texas) and Mustangs (28-point losers to Penn State) exited by two touchdowns or more.

Upgrading the on-field product will do more to lift the ACC's stature than tweaking the way it picks its playoff structure. But it's an interesting discussion.

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