ACC might end separate football divisions
Whether it becomes official here this week during the ACC’s annual spring meetings or sometime in the not-so-distant future, the conference appears likely, sooner rather than later, to adopt a new football scheduling model that would abandon the Atlantic and Coastal Divisions.
With the exception of the pandemic-altered 2020 season, the ACC has used a divisional model in football since 2005, when the conference grew to include 12 schools. Now, though, amid an urgency to enhance its football product and maximize its ability to generate revenue, the league appears on the verge of going to a division-less model, which would allow most schools to play each other more often than they do now.
“We’re closer to the end than to the beginning,” Dan Radakovich, the Miami athletic director, said here on Tuesday, when asked about the possibility of the ACC adopting a new scheduling model. Radakovich added that there’s strong momentum behind a model that would leave each of the ACC’s 14 fulltime members with three permanent football opponents, and a two-year rotation with the other 10 schools in the league.
In that scenario, teams would play the same three opponents every season, in addition to a group of five teams in even years and the other five remaining teams in odd years. It would take two seasons, and not the current six, or more, for every ACC team to play every other team in the conference.
“I think that really got a lot of thumbs up around the room,” said Radakovich, who is among the elder statesmen of ACC athletic directors. Though he’s in his first year in his position at Miami, he has held the same job at Clemson and Georgia Tech.
The question now for the ACC is when the scheduling format would become official. With the 2022 schedule already decided, it appears likely that a new format would go into effect for the 2023 season.
Before anything becomes finalized, though, Radokovich said the ACC would solicit input, if not permission or direct guidance, from ESPN, which owns the conference’s television rights.
“We need to talk a little bit to our TV partners to see what they think, kind of run it through the carwash one more time,” Radakovich said. “It’s not urgent to be able to get done right now, from a timing perspective, because even if we decided to move this forward for ’23, there’s opportunity and time to be able to get it done. So we want to be deliberate about it, and make sure that we’re doing everything the right way.”
Conference officials, including its football coaches, have long discussed the possibility of doing away with divisions. After years of inaction on the topic, there are two reasons why the idea has finally gained traction this year. For one, the NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee has recommended legislation that would end the requirement that conferences need divisions to hold a league championship game. The legislation is expected to pass later this month.
Second, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips has made a clear priority of bolstering the league’s football profile. A divisionless ACC has long been viewed as a potential way to do that. It would allow for the league’s two best teams to meet for a conference championship, regardless of what division they’re currently in, and it’d also allow for more familiarity, and arguably more fan interest, if teams play each other more often.
“I would like to have more opportunity to play more teams,” Dave Doeren, the N.C. State football coach, said on Tuesday. “I think being in the league as long as I have, being as close as I am to Duke, for an example, and only playing them every six years — from a player-experience standpoint, from a fanexperience standpoint, I think it makes sense to have a better opportunity to play each other.
“I’m not 100 percent saying we need to get rid of divisions. I think however they do it, we need to have more opportunity to play each other. That’s my big thing, you know. I have a personal opinion on it — I’d like to see the best two teams play in the championship game, that’s just my personal opinion. But how we get to that — there’s a lot of options being discussed.”
Not everyone is sold on an ACC without football divisions. Mack Brown, the UNC football coach, said he favored the divisional model because “I like a division champion.”