ACC changes up football & basketball schedules

ACC College Football17

It looks like the Atlantic Coast Conference has ultimately ‘saved’ the tradition of NC State and UNC-CHeats playing an annual home-and-home basketball series. Teams will play two “primary partners” in an 18-game schedule. The two partners will play home & away annually; and the other 14 games are home & away games with 2 rotating opponents along with 5 home-only games and 5 road-only games. The Wolfpack will be paired with North Carolina and Wake Forest.

You can click here for the entire release and see the primary partners of everyone. Oddly, Notre Dame’s primary partners in hoops partners are Boston College and Georgia Tech.

On the football side, the ACC will play an eight-game football conference schedule starting in 2013.

The ACC will play an eight-game football conference schedule starting in 2013 due to the league’s scheduling agreement with Notre Dame, industry sources told ESPN.

The ACC had approved a plan for a nine-game conference schedule for 2013. However, league members decided to go with an eight-game schedule instead after Notre Dame joined the ACC in a full member for all sports except football.

Notre Dame will play five non-conference games annually against ACC teams beginning in 2013. The Irish said they will exit the Big East as an Olympic sport member as soon as they can negotiate a deal with the conference.

I like this move for many reasons. While folks like CBS’ Dennis Dodd tries to make a big deal about the impact of the strength of the schedule relative to the coming playoff system, I don’t see much of the risk. I personally like the flexibility of scheduling someone else on the non-conference side of the equation.

Lastly, the ACC Baseball Championship will feature 10 teams in a six-day event starting in 2014. A double-elimination format will be used Tuesday through Friday followed by two single-elimination games on Saturday and the Championship Game on Sunday. That is called ‘pressure’.

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ACC College Football

17 Responses to ACC changes up football & basketball schedules

  1. old13 10/03/2012 at 12:37 PM #

    The WRAL alert says State, Duke and U*NC-CHeat/Fraud “will remain primary partners in basketball.” Guess they can’t read!

  2. LRM 10/03/2012 at 12:40 PM #

    Will the 8-game football schedule affect the annual State-Carolina game?

    If you play six intra-division games, then you only have two cross-division games left.

  3. JEOH2 10/03/2012 at 12:55 PM #

    2 Primary Partners in Football? Rotate the 2 OOD Games? or 1 Rival and Rotate 1?

  4. UpstateSCWolfpack 10/03/2012 at 12:56 PM #

    Football change doesn’t suprise me. I was thinking that with 9 conference games and ND that the years that they played teams like GT, Clempson, and FSU, that was going to leave those schools with only one game to schedule for OOC. Since, they play, UGa, the fake Carolina, and UF every year, respectively.

  5. TheCOWDOG 10/03/2012 at 1:40 PM #

    What a terrible letdown for fans and supporters.

    It isn’t easy booking decent OOC games, and the 9 gamer would have eased that “quality” opponent worth seeing search. I was counting on it.

    It’s getting harder and harder to give tickets away for the Citadels, USAs…on and on, games.

    I’m very disappointed. It would be interesting to see what the voting ledger looked like.

  6. StateFans 10/03/2012 at 2:10 PM #

    Cowdog, it is getting harder to give away the tickets to the ‘bad’ games because of where we are as a program — not necessarily because of those games.

    If we were a Top 25 team that was making some kind of noise, then giving away those tickets would be a breeze. For example, had we beaten UT in the first game and not laid the egg we did then you could’ve actually gotten decent money for those tix.

  7. wolfbuff 10/03/2012 at 2:13 PM #

    I think the 8 game schedule give us more incentive (though it might not be that easy) to schedule at least one more quality opponent than the 9 gamer would. And every 3 years we’re playing ND so on those years, we’d be playing Meredith the other 3 games. Nothing against ND; it’s nice to have them on our upcoming schedules. But I’d like to see us play an SEC or Big 12 opponent once in a while. The 8 game schedule gives us that chance.

  8. TheCOWDOG 10/03/2012 at 3:03 PM #

    You missed the point. I do not really wish to give my tickets away. 🙂

    As far as incentive…history is not on our side, and we’ve plenty of savvy to understand just how difficult the OOC
    process is.

    No, I carry too big a chip on my shoulder. I’m not alone.

    Look, we played an 11 game schedule and never dropped in class. Hell, that was when it was a 6 game ACC slate to boot.

  9. Texpack 10/03/2012 at 4:06 PM #

    COWDOG is right about what our schedule quality used to be. My freshman year(79) our OOC games were South Carolina, Auburn, Penn State, ECU and WVU.

    We went 7-4, and I would argue that team was better than the 9 win team TOB had and probably as good as the 11 win team CTC had.

    In my first four years at State we played PSU, ECU, and South Carolina every year. We played Miami, Fl twice.

  10. Virginia Wolf 10/03/2012 at 4:07 PM #

    I’m glad to see this! Should allow for some creative scheduling. Now, if we can just get our folks to be creative in scheduling!

  11. CincyPack 10/03/2012 at 6:53 PM #

    Funny how we are predicted to be better than UNX and have more awesome recruits on the way in and the ACC now decides that we should still play UNX twice a year. Funny to see how money talks…

  12. wilmwolf80 10/03/2012 at 6:55 PM #

    While our OOC schedule has left a lot to be desired, it’s not always directly the fault of those scheduling the games. IMO, we aren’t a very attractive option for the bigger programs to play. We aren’t normally good enough that beating us will matter, but we aren’t a cupcake, so we aren’t exactly a guaranteed victory. Also, I don’t think most of the big boys will risk a home-and-home series against us, as C-F is traditionally a tough place to play. We have seen teams buy out of the game on several occasions. The real fact is, in any given year, if we win our conference games, we have a chance to win the league and go to a BCS game. That, to me, should be real goal. It would bother me ZERO if all of our OOC games are against Sisters of the Poor, if we could take care of business in the conference. 8 games, 9 games, doesn’t matter.

  13. highstick 10/03/2012 at 7:36 PM #

    And the so called “Fake Carolina” has been kicking butts in the ACC.. I love it when an Urange Turd Bird runs his yap!

    Play a “big boy” schedule, dang it! But that will take immense change!

    This schedule does nothing for me..We play enough “patty cakes” right now and can’t beat them.

  14. BJD95 10/04/2012 at 7:19 AM #

    I vehemently disagree about “winning” taking care of low demand for uninteresting games. I had LTRs for several years where excitement was at absolute peak. No matter what, playing The Citadel and South Alabama (or whoever their equivalents might be in a given year) is boring as shit. Creates no shareholder value, but when you have a captive market (those LTRs again)…no incentive to do anything different.

    Looking around at many D-1A programs, schools schedule 3 or even FOUR dud games. I suppose for the social butterfly who looks forward to tailgating and mingling the most…hey, no big deal. More home games! But for the football fan (especially an introvert like me), it totally sucks. And in the long run, it most definitely saps excitement about the on-field product.

    One of the reasons I like the 16-team playoff, super conference model/trend…I think it’s only natural that centralized scheduling with follow. Because it will be all about TV money (yes, even more than now), and it being about TV money ultimately benefits the football fan. An unintended consequence with fantastic results. This day (I predict it will happen around 2025-30) can’t come soone enough for me.

  15. LRM 10/04/2012 at 7:51 AM #

    The problem is that we need seven home games every year, and that limits our options.

    Top programs don’t offer home-and-home series unless it’s against a marquee opponent. That’s why we end up playing the Big East and the MAC — the MAC doesn’t require a return visit, they just want the payday.

  16. john of sparta 10/04/2012 at 4:52 PM #

    eventually, we will need to sell full-price tickets.
    TV rules, but box-office dominates. if the game
    is a sell-out, TV hitches a ride. question: right now….
    would you spend $70 for a single C-FS seat to watch:
    1. Notre Dame.
    2. FSU.
    3. BC.

  17. 61Packer 10/04/2012 at 7:59 PM #

    There are a number of problems here. Most paramount is that as long as we keep playing 3 OOC cupcakes each season, we’re NEVER going to be as good as many Wolfpackers want us to be.

    Just how is a 3-game series with South Alabama going to help our team develop? Ditto with Central Michigan and all the other “directional” teams we schedule. And in the meantime, we continue to not play our closest ACC opponent, Duke, except once every 4 or 5 seasons.

    I’ve been one of the most outspoken opponents on this site about ACC expansion, which SUCKS! The more teams that enter the ACC, the less we see our regional rivals at C-F. Now that Syracuse is in our division, we can now drool over playing them every year but playing the Coastal opponents even less often. Why didn’t the ACC put Pitt in our division instead of Syracuse? Another piss-poor divisional rival to go with BC, WF, Maryland and Miami.

    As an LTR holder, I’m not going to turn in my tickets over this, but in 5 years, I’m going to be a lot closer if something doesn’t fundamentally change in regard to the way NC State looks at taking its football program up several levels. We can’t keep on hanging our season on the Clemson and FSU games, especially when we can’t consistently beat Wake Forest.

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