The Atlantic Coast Conference football champions includes 11 distinct teams that have won the college football championship awarded by the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) since its creation in 1953. Sixteen teams have competed in the conference since that year. Four teams—Miami, Boston College, Syracuse, and Louisville—have never won an ACC football championship, while two schools that are no longer a member of the league hold championships: Maryland holds nine championships and South Carolina holds one championship.
Between 1953 and 2003, the championship was normally earned in round-robin regular-season play among all conference members, although in earlier years league teams did not typically play every possible ACC opponent. The league did not employ tiebreaking procedures, such as head-to-head results, to determine a single champion, and thus it was not unusual for a season to end with "co-champions." With a 2004 expansion of the league to include Miami and Virginia Tech, round-robin play became impossible due to an NCAA limit on the number of games a team may play during the season and the unwillingness of the league to hold more than eight conference games per season per team. NCAA rules also forbade a championship game due to the league having only 11 members.
A 2005 expansion that admitted Boston College gave the ACC the required 12 members needed for divisional play and a championship game. The ACC Championship Game has been held annually since that year, featuring the regular-season winners of the Atlantic and Coastal divisions in a game to determine the conference champion.[1]
During the 2005, 2006, and 2007 seasons, the championship game was held at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2008 and 2009, the championship was held at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. From 2010 through 2015 the game was held at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. It returned to Florida in 2016 when it was held at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, but moved back to Charlotte in 2017 where the championship game is slated to remain through 2030.[2]