On Saturday night, the unthinkable happened for the ACC league office in Charlotte, NC. Virginia beat Virginia Tech and SMU was upset by Cal, creating a five-way tie for second place that sends the 7-5 Duke Blue Devils to the ACC Championship Game over four ranked teams with better overall records.

Without getting in the weeds, wonky tiebreakers necessary in the new mega-conference era favored the Blue Devils. And now, should Duke win the ACC Championship Game next Saturday, there’s a strong likelihood that the conference will not place a single team into the College Football Playoff, as two Group of Five champions could rank ahead of the Blue Devils and swoop the automatic bids.

Scenarios such as this were always a risk for a conference like the ACC, which has recently expanded to 18 members yet only plays eight conference games. The absurdity of the situation has spurred some in the media to suggest the conference take drastic measures.

National college football writer and NBC Sports analyst Nicole Auerbach took to social media on Saturday night to implore the ACC to “override” Duke’s bid into the conference title game in favor of Miami, a team that currently ranks 12th nationally, the highest of any ACC team.

This might be an unpopular take … but if I’m the ACC and Cal upsets SMU, I override the tiebreakers and put Miami in the ACC championship game against Virginia.

— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) November 30, 2025

“This might be an unpopular take … but if I’m the ACC and Cal upsets SMU, I override the tiebreakers and put Miami in the ACC championship game against Virginia,” Auerbach wrote on X.

That may sound extreme, and frankly, it is. But in today’s college football landscape, one that fans couldn’t have even imagined 10 years ago, any suggestion is fair game.

That being said, this would obviously be an absurd move for the ACC to pull. The tiebreakers, albeit convoluted and arguable on the merits, were clearly established prior to the season. To stray from them would be to admit this entire process is a sham, and results on the field don’t actually mater.

We all know Miami is the better team. They have the much better overall record, too. But the Hurricanes didn’t win the games they needed to win to avoid falling into a tiebreaker with Duke (and three other teams) in the first place. Can you argue the schedules weren’t balanced? Sure. But that’s simply reality in an 18-team conference.

No doubt, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips wishes his conference wrote up different tiebreakers that would send the Hurricanes into the championship game instead of Duke. And perhaps the ACC will change its tiebreak procedures for next season. But to throw them out the window completely just to get your preferred team into next weekend’s title game, thereby ensuring a College Football Playoff bid, would be a miscarriage of justice.