GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Down a short, nondescript hallway on the second floor inside ACC headquarters, sits a room far different from the offices that surround it.

Nine flat-screen televisions are mounted along a wall. Computer monitors and hard drives are arranged around the front of the room. In the back of the room, a long table sits on a raised step. Remote controls are carefully set one next to the other at one end.

At the other, commissioner John Swofford sits in a black swivel chair, quietly watching nine league schools play on the second-to-last Saturday of the season. Swofford has company in the ACC Game Day Operations Center.

Michael Strickland, senior associate commissioner for football operations, is there. So is an ACC video coordinator and an ACC replay official, whose job is to help monitor calls made in the various games.

Each game is recorded, and interns log video and data for each penalty and replay review so coordinator of officials Doug Rhoads can go through and produce a training video for all officials and coaches by 6 p.m. Monday.

There would be one non-call in particular Saturday that would become the talk of the day -- and prompt an automatic review Sunday.

But before that play happens, four 3:30 p.m. games kick off while Wake Forest and Virginia Tech play into overtime. Swofford monitors them all, and jokes that you need "agile eyes" to pay attention to all the screens -- four smaller televisions on each side flank a big screen.

He comes into the operations center four to five times during the football season when his schedule allows because it is the perfect spot to watch multiple games.

It is all business inside the room, mostly quiet save for the television announcers and interns yelling out scores from the games they are monitoring. When the Boston College-Florida State game kicks off, it goes up on the big screen.

The league needs Florida State to keep winning to keep its College Football Playoff chances alive, but nobody is rooting on the Seminoles -- Boston College is an ACC team, too. So everybody watches the tight first half in near silence.

Swofford has not spoken much publicly about unbeaten Florida State and the way the selection committee has chosen to rank the Seminoles No. 3, behind two one-loss teams. At halftime, he moves to a different room to give his thoughts, carefully choosing his words to avoid saying too much.

"What matters is at the end, and what it looks like at that point in time," he said. "I’m totally biased, and the committee is supposed to not be. I would put them first, but with the chair that I sit in, that’s a biased opinion. But you are talking about the defending national champion that’s won, at this point, 26 games in a row, and ultimately what matters is do you win or not? I think that’s extraordinarily important in all of this."

Is Florida State being judged more harshly than teams from other conferences?

"I’m not going to answer that right now," he said. "I’m not one to judge processes in the middle of the process. Let’s see how the season plays out, let’s see where things are at the end and listen to the explanations as to why, and get the first year under our belt. It’s a committee with enormous football experience and a lot of responsibility with only four teams to make good judgments, and I tend to want to see the end result based on the entire season and see what that looks like, because there will be things that happen on the field that we don’t anticipate. That happens almost every year late in the season."

The way the committee has publicly released its rankings each week has also drawn recent scrutiny. Swofford, who sits on the management committee, said that is a topic that should be revisited in the offseason.

"There was a lot of discussion and different opinions about when to start the rankings and how often to release them. Once it’s all done and we move past that first championship game, the management committee as well as the selection committee will have some conversations and take a look at what worked and is the process what we want? Was it effective? And if not, how do we need to change it?"

Swofford pushed hard for a playoff, although he probably never guessed an unbeaten team from his league would be so devalued during the process. He does not answer that question directly, reiterating that he wants to see how the rankings play out. "We all want what we feel like is best for our particular team," he said.

While Swofford talks, the third quarter resumes in Tallahassee. In that quarter, Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston attempts to shove an official out of the way so his team can go hurry-up, a move that draws widespread national interest. Winston was not flagged for making contact with an official, and play continues.

Swofford retreats back to the operations center. A few phone calls come in asking for clarification on what happened. The ACC replay official is noncommittal when asked whether a flag should have been thrown. On Sunday, Rhoads issued a statement saying the game official believed the contact to be "incidental."

Two games go down to the wire: BC-FSU and Louisville-Notre Dame. The games alternate on the big screen. When Roberto Aguayo sails his field goal through the uprights to give Florida State its 27th straight victory, nobody reacts outwardly. Swofford leaves a short time later, bidding everyone farewell.

Although nobody will say it, there has to be relief Florida State did not bid its own playoff spot farewell.