A method for selective use of control channel element (CCE)-based implicit pointing. The method includes the step of determining whether a number of multiple user elements (UE) within a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) group is greater than the number of resource blocks allocated to the MU-MIMO group. If the number of UEs in the MU-MIMO group is greater than the number of resource blocks allocated to the MU-MIMO group, the method further includes transmitting to each of the UEs of the MU-MIMO group acknowledgements on acknowledgement channels within a first acknowledgement bank and acknowledgements on acknowledgement channels within a second acknowledgement bank. A first portion of the UEs of the MU-MIMO group receives the acknowledgements on the acknowledgement channels within the first acknowledgement bank and a second portion of the UEs of MU-MIMO group receives the acknowledgements on the acknowledgement channels within the second acknowledgement bank.