ACC unveils 7-year football roster for new 17-team league

The league will continue to play eight group games without divisions. The 17 teams will play each other at least twice over the next seven seasons, once at home and once away. The ACC’s current 14 teams will play a total of three times in California through 2030, and none will travel to California in consecutive seasons.

In a change from the current 3-3-5 scheduling model, which the ACC adopted for this season, not every school has the same number of protected rivalry games. Some schools have three; The majority are two; Clemson has one. Georgia Tech and Louisville have zero.

Eleven of the 16 protected games from the existing model have been retained. Miami-Virginia Tech and NC State-Wake Forest are restored from their previous divisional format, while Cal, Stanford and SMU will play each other.

The protected annual matchups are: Boston College-Syracuse, Boston College-Pitt, Syracuse-Pitt, North Carolina-Virginia, North Carolina-Duke, North Carolina-NC State, North Carolina State-Wake Forest, North Carolina State-Duke, Duke -Week. Forest, Virginia Tech-Virginia, Florida State-Clemson, Miami-Florida State, Miami-Virginia Tech, Stanford-Cal, Stanford-SMU, and Cal-SMU.

“Throughout the entire scheduling model process, members have been incredibly thoughtful and purposeful in building a creative, flexible and robust conference scheduling model while keeping the student-athlete experience at the forefront,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement. “The excitement and anticipation of our teams, alumni and fans will undoubtedly increase as we look to the future of this amazing conference.”

In order to come up with the new scheduling model, athletic directors from each school collaborated with the league to help decide which games they wanted to protect. Ultimately, the league’s advertising accepted the new scheduling model. In the case of Georgia Tech and Louisville, the two schools agreed that they did not need any protected games, and this allowed the league to have more creativity and flexibility in arranging the entire schedule.

“I’ve said out loud to the conference office that we don’t have a true competitor in the ACC, so we can be more flexible in trying to put a schedule together,” Louisville athletic director Josh Hurd told ESPN. “Who are the real rivals that we have to keep together? Viewership is what drives some of these rivalries. But overall, I think everyone is pretty happy — as happy as you are when you’re trying to satisfy 17 different wants and needs.”

Although Clemson and Georgia Tech will disappear as an annual rivalry after their 89th game later this year, the two teams will play four times between 2024 and 2030. Clemson-North Carolina State, which has been played 91 times, is also disappearing as an annual game. To allow the Wolfpack to play Duke, North Carolina and Wake Forest on an annual basis. But in a nod to the history of this series, Clemson-NC State will play three times over seven years.

With the league now stretching from the East Coast to the West Coast, geography has been taken into account in this new model. The league wanted to reduce the number of repeated trips to the same geographical area in the same season, and increase the proportion of matches against nearby teams.

For example, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Florida State, and Miami will play each other in 24% of their games between 2024 and 2030. Boston College, Pitt, Louisville and Syracuse will face each other 32% of their games. Carolina and Virginia schools will also play each other frequently.

Miami, NC State and Syracuse head west to play at Cal in 2024, while Louisville, SMU, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest will play at Stanford.

Although Cal, Stanford and SMU did not get a formal vote on the scheduling model, all three schools participated in the discussions and had input. Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton was added to the football scheduling committee after the Bears joined the ACC.

“We play both [existing] “ACC schools three times in the next seven years, and we have fans that are really excited about the trips to Boston or Syracuse, North Carolina and Florida,” Knowlton told ESPN. “I think there is an opportunity to develop rivalries that will grow in every Cal alum and fan.”

The only school not included in Monday’s schedule release is Notre Dame, which plays a handful of non-conference games against ACC schools annually. That rotation will be determined at a later date, but it remains unclear whether future Notre Dame-Stanford games will be considered ACC play or remain non-conference.

The 2024 football schedule with specific play dates for all games will be announced on January 31, 2024 on the ACC Network.