With a 7-5 team in the conference championship, what's next for the ACC? - ESPN

THERE ARE TWO ways of looking at the situation the ACC faces entering Saturday's championship game in which Duke, a 7-5 team with multiple losses outside the Power 4, could win the conference and, in doing so, keep the league out of the College Football Playoff altogether.

The first is that it's simply a quirk of modern college football — sprawling conferences with limited crossover between teams inevitably leading to a scenario where esoteric tiebreakers come into play. The ACC's system isn't much different than other conferences, the policy was approved by coaches and ADs, and Duke, for all its flaws, went 6-2 in league play.

The other perspective, however, is that the ACC — for reasons rational, coincidental and, perhaps, metaphysical — attracts the unusual.

The latter philosophy might be a charming quirk of the conference if the stakes weren't so high. The ACC's Wheel of Destiny, "Coastal Chaos" and the social media stalwart #goacc have been fundamental to the league's identity for nearly two decades. But as the business of college football has gotten bigger, the rewards of success richer, and the battles for conference supremacy more intense, the ACC's role as college football's most colorful band of swashbuckling misfits isn't so fun for the coaches whose careers hang in the balance and the programs desperate to keep pace in a rapidly evolving landscape in which the ACC often feels woefully behind.

«The ACC is becoming a laughingstock,» one former ACC coach said. «It's not a cool place to be.»

Duke's presence in Charlotte on Saturday (vs. Virginia, 8 p.m. ET on ABC) is a result of a five-way tie for second place in the league, but also, according to a dozen current and former ACC coaches and administrators who