No, the old, old system.
SEC champ locked into Sugar Bowl. I don't recall where the ACC champ was locked into--Gator? Peach?
The ACC didn't have an official major/New Year's Day bowl tie-in under the old bowl system. But remember, that wasn't much of a football conference prior to 2000. The Big East split apart and the ACC brought a bunch of those schools aboard (Miami, Boston College, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, Louisville, Pittsburgh). Even Florida State wasn't a member of the ACC until 1991 (prior to that, they were an independent).
Now, they may have had some contract with a lesser bowl, but the old system wouldn't have automatically put the ACC champ into any particular New Year's Day major bowl game. Yes, sometimes they did play in one -- as all of the non-Rose Bowl major bowl had one conference tie-in matched up against an at-large team.
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