ACC considers new scheduling
Conference may eliminate divisions
The ACC is mulling a change to its football scheduling model that could include the elimination of divisions by 2023.
Discussions are taking place among league schools during the ACC’s spring meetings in Amelia Island, Fla. Commissioner Jim Phillips told reporters that the league also plans to talk with ESPN as its TV partner with the ACC Network.
“I’m confident we’re going to get to a decision,” Phillips said when asked whether he expected the plan would go forward. “Either we’re going to do it or we’re not going to do it, and then we’re not going to be talking about it.”
The focus is a 3-5-5 model that would have teams playing three opponents as permanent scheduling partners annually then rotating the other 10 teams over two seasons in the eight-game schedule (five one year, five the next).
As a result, teams would play every other league team twice in a four-year span.
Currently teams can go years without meeting, such as nearby neighbors like N.C. State and Duke playing in 2020 for the first time in seven seasons.
Teams currently have one permanent partner across the Atlantic and Coastal Division format, play
another rotating cross-division foe and play the rest within their division.
The discussions come after the ACC’s 2020 season nixed divisions and added Notre Dame for one year in a 10-game schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Under the format currently, we only play [North Carolina] twice every 12 years,” Wake Forest athletics director John Currie said, adding: “That’s not right. So there’s an opportunity in assessing the models to rectify things like that.”
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