ACC moves its title game to Orlando

Conference pulled event from N.C. because of state law.

The ACC is bringing its football championship game back to Florida.

T h e c o n f e r e n c e announced Thursday the ACC title game will be played in Orlando at Camping World Stadium on Dec. 3. The game will kick offff at 7:45 p.m. or 8 p.m. depending whether it is televised by ESPN or ABC.

The game was originally scheduled to be played in Charlotte, N.C., where it has been the past six years, but the conference decided two weeks ago to move it out of the state in response to North Carolina’s House Bill 2 law.

The law, which Gov. Pat McCrory signed in March, limits anti-discriminatory protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

A more publicized part of the law stipulates which bathrooms transgender people can use. On state property, the law mandates that people use the bathroom for the gender specifified on their birth certifificate.

The fifirst fifive years of the ACC championship game were played in Florida. Jacksonville hosted the game from 2005-07 and Tampa had it for the 2008 and ’09 seasons.

The conference thought it had found a home in Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium, staging the game there from 2010 through last year’s matchup bet ween Clemson and North Carolina, but made the decision on Sept. 14 to move all of its neutral-site championship games out of the state. The move came two days after the NCAA pulled its championships out of the state because of HB2.

The ACC has an existing relationship with the Flori da Ci t r us Spor t s group, which will run the conference championship game. FCSports runs the Citrus Bowl and Russell Athletic Bowl and the ACC has a deal with both games.

Florida State also held its spring game at the stadium, formerly known as the Citrus Bowl. The stadium underwent a $208 million renovation in 2015.

No. 7 St a nfo rd f a c e s No. 10 Washington: Chris Petersen would like this to be all about what David Shaw has done in building Stanford into the class of the Pac- 12 Conference.

“Stanford’s an awesome program. I’ll start with that — program,” Washington’s coach said this week. “This isn’t just an awesome team. They’ve had an awesome program for a while now. They know how to do it.”

In reality, this is all about No. 10 Washington when the Huskies (4-0, 1-0 Pac-12) face No. 7 Stanford tonight. Now in his third season in charge at Washington, is Petersen ready to have the Huskies enter the national conversation the same way his Boise State teams did when they were at their peak?

Bec ause if the Huskies knock offff Stanford (3-0, 2-0) and take command of the Pac-12 North race, they won’t just be in contention for a conference crown. Washington would immediately join a loftier conversation.

This is a rare opportunit y for Washington. It’s just the fourth matchup of AP Top 10 teams at Husky Stadium and the fifirst since the second-ranked Huskies were taken down by No. 7 Nebraska 19 years ago.