ACC has a zany idea for its title game, and it may be the dumbest concept of all time

You are too big to be this small, ACC. Do better, please... What ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is throwing out there to the media about the idea of changing his league's conference championship game is completely asinine. In the aftermath of a three-loss Clemson Tigers team defeating a one-loss SMU Mustangs team in the ACC Championship, Phillips is going about this in the wrong manner.

The idea put forth by Phillips is to protect the ACC regular season champion at all costs, in order to ensure themselves of a playoff berth. SMU earned the right to be the No. 11 seed and the last team to make the field as an at-large because the Mustangs lost to Clemson in the conference title bout. SMU deserved to make the field, as they earned their right to get smoked hellaciously by No. 6 Penn State.

Phillips lost me by saying the ACC Championship could be played between the league's second and third-place finishers, possibly even kicking it out to four teams with No. 1 taking on the No. 4 seed.

"The conference championship games are important, as long as we make them important, right? 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."

What are we even doing here?! This is the type of stuff a Group of Five league would try to pull off!

"That's one of the options, depending on how you treat the conference champions, or that championship game, you may want to do it different."

I understand that the ACC is trying to rectify a potential flaw in the system, but this is not the way.

"I have alluded to that in some of our every-other-week-AD calls, and these are some of the things moving forward. We want to have a recap of the regular season, postseason, and what do we think moving forward?"

Let me explain why revamping the ACC Championship Game is arguably the worst idea I have heard.

Jim Phillips' idea on changing the ACC Championship Game is so absurd

Look. If this is something either the Big Ten or SEC wanted to implement, it would be received so much better. It would have protected teams like Oregon and Texas the most, while having teams like Penn State and Georgia play teams like Ohio State and Tennessee for a second time. What you have to remember is that is it no really a Power Four, but a Power Two. Neither league would ever do this.

If Phillips' plan would have been implemented last year, SMU would have been excluded from the ACC Championship with No. 2 Clemson taking on No. 3 Miami for the right to maybe get a spot in. If we kicked it out to four teams, No. 1 SMU would have played No. 4 Syracuse. Could you imagine what would have happened if the Mustangs lost to the Orange? The league may not have gotten a team in!

I understand that this may be a way to offset the lack of common opponents in conference play. With divisions having gone away, the regular-season schedules are less balanced that ever before, hence an unintended consequence of conference realignment. The last thing you want to do as a Power Four league is to debase yourself from being part of this most glorious quartet. This idea does that.

What I like the most about this new College Football Playoff format is each league has several ways of getting its teams into the tournament. While we may need to reconfigure the four highest-ranked conference champions getting first-round byes, the right 12 teams made it this past year. However, the ACC was the least impressive Power Four league in the playoff this year due to its two early exits.

Ask yourself this. Had the Big 12 done something like this, would Brett Yormark's team have gotten a team into the tournament? Arizona State getting the "bye" with No. 2 Iowa State facing No. 3 BYU may not have helped any of those Big 12 teams. It would have only created more confusion. What if we kicked it out to four and now No. 1 Arizona State has to play No. 4 Colorado? It would add even more!

What I am trying to say is the Power Four needs uniformity more than ever. This starts with the Big Ten and SEC coming to terms on what needs to happen going forward, whether that be number of conference games, out-of-conference games, competitive balance games, and even who plays in a conference tournament of sorts. By the ACC suggesting this, all it does is make the league look weak.

When you are striving for third place, you are bound to find yourself in last place more often than not.