Could ACC football championship game in Charlotte vanish due to playoff changes?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- The ACC championship in Charlotte might disappear as early as 2027 due to CFP expansion.
- ACC commissioner Jim Phillips backs hypothetical expansion of CFP from 12 to 24.
- A 24-team playoff could eliminate conference title games due to calendar constraints.
One of my favorite events each year on the Charlotte sports calendar — the ACC football championship — could vanish as early as 2027.
It’s not because the ACC plans to move the game, which has been played in Charlotte at Bank of America Stadium in 15 of the past 16 seasons. It’s not because the game hasn’t been a success — because it has.
It’s because the game itself — like every other conference championship game at college football’s highest level — could disappear entirely, erased by the sport’s proposed playoff expansion.
Let’s make a couple of things clear: First, this season’s game is not in any danger. It will be played on Dec. 5, 2026, at noon, between the conference’s top two teams.
Second, this is not an “ACC is doing something bad to Charlotte” sort of thing — the conference and its headquarter city are joined at the hip and have linked up in a multi-pronged partnership that has been great for both sides in numerous ways.
No, this is a national thing. And the way the wind is blowing, the ACC football championship game may get swept up by a tornado of change when and if the College Football Playoff (CFP) bracket expands from 12 teams (where it will stay again in 2026) to as many as 24 teams.
To fit in more playoff games and still end the season at a reasonable time, something has to go. If the hypothetical 24-team playoff comes to pass, the conference championship games are squarely in the danger zone.
For the first time on Wednesday, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips came out publicly in favor of expanding the CFP from 12 to 24 teams. In his press conference at Amelia Island, Fla., at the conclusion of the league’s annual meetings, Phillips said the league’s position is that a 24-team playoff would be the logical next step for the CFP. He said his conversations with the league’s head coaches and athletic directors had convinced him this was the right path.
“The desire with the coaches and the ADs is to go to 24,” Phillips said.
And what happens then to conference championship games like the ones that the SEC, the ACC and many other conferences hold?
“When you look at championship games and if you expand the playoff to that number,” Phillips said, “I think you end up going from regular season right into the playoff. I just think you end up doing that.”
Coaches association weighs in
The American Football Coaches Association — which doesn’t control the sport but does have a large voice in it — has already recommended that conference championship games be eliminated to help fix the length of the season. The Charlotte Sports Foundation, which has been instrumental in running both the ACC title game and many other sports-related events in our city, declined comment Thursday. (The ACC’s college football championship has had an estimated economic impact of roughly $26 million per year over the past five years).
The college season now stretches from late August until January, and the next two college football seasons won’t end until late January. The AFCA recommends ending the season by the second Monday in January.
Why does the ACC want to double the size of the CFP? Phillips said that you increase both “access” to the playoff and “hope” among the teams who aren’t quite at the top tier. He pointed out that the NFL — where 14 of 32 teams make the playoffs each year — has 44% of its teams in the postseason. (The Panthers made the playoffs last season with an 8-9 regular-season record, which would be unfathomable in college football).
College football has dozens of bowl games. But as for the CFP itself, only 12 of 138 teams will make it this season, which is 9%. The ACC has been personally burned by the CFP, too — in 2023, in the final year of the four-team playoff, undefeated league champion Florida State still got shut out of the bracket.
“I think that’s about access,” Phillips said. “And if you’re going to ask presidents and chancellors and boards to continue to invest in their football programs, it’s really important that they have hope, that they have an opportunity at the beginning of the season to get into the playoff.”
The Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC have now proclaimed they are in favor of a 24-team system, which would start as early as 2027. The SEC, however, has not, and might end up scotching the whole idea, or at least keeping the playoff to a more modest 16. The upcoming SEC meetings in Destin, Fla., will be key.
A reimagining of the CFP
Hypothetically, if the playoff field goes to 24, Charlotte’s conference championship game could be a thing of the past as early as 2027. Although the game is contracted to be in Charlotte through the 2030 season, that’s based on the fact of the game existing at all, and my understanding is there would not be any significant contractual hurdles to jump if the game simply disappears.
All would not be lost, however: the Queen City could be well-positioned for a neutral site College Football Playoff game. Among the statistics Charlotte can tout is a new one that came out this week: Census data shows that no other U.S. city added more people in the past year than Charlotte.
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One way or another, it seems that the CFP will soon be reimagined. Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, whose team has won eight of the previous 11 ACC championship games, told reporters at the ACC meetings this week that he didn’t want conference title games to go away but that he got the logic.
“Do I like it? No,” Swinney said. “But I totally understand it, because that’s where it’s going…. Sooner or later, if you keep adding games, the calendar’s only got so many dates.”
Conference championship games have been controversial previously but have survived, with coaches whose teams were already likely to make the CFP openly wondering about whether a loss — or a key injury — would hurt them far more than a win would help. And while conference title games are part of the game for a generation of fans, the first one wasn’t until 1992, when the SEC debuted one. So there were decades worth of college football games played without them.
And while the ACC title games in Charlotte have generally been well-attended, last year’s was not. The Duke upset win over Virginia was played before one of the smallest crowds in ACC championship game history, with an announced attendance of 41,672. That left 30,000 empty seats in Bank of America Stadium, with tarps covering significant portions of the upper deck end zones on a 39-degree night.
Still, there was drama, and Charlotte’s ACC title game has produced a lot of that over the years.
The ACC football championship is the biggest college football game played here, every year. In many ways, it would be a shame to lose it.
The State’s Chapel Fowler contributed reporting.
This story was originally published May 15, 2026 at 5:15 AM with the headline "Could ACC football championship game in Charlotte vanish due to playoff changes?."
