By Chris Vannini, Grace Raynor, Brendan Marks and Manny Navarro
The ACC announced Monday night its new scheduling model for the 2024 through 2030 seasons to accommodate the league’s expansion to 17 teams.
Last month, the ACC announced that California, SMU and Stanford will join the league as new members for the 2024-25 academic year. As a result, the league was forced to scrap a new scheduling model that was introduced for the 2023 season that eliminated divisions and gave each school three permanent opponents.
Here are the highlights of the updated schedule:
- Each team will still play eight regular-season conference games.
- All 17 teams will play each other at least twice in a seven-year span.
- There are 16 annual protected matchups for the next seven years:
- Boston College vs. Syracuse
- Boston College vs. Pittsburgh
- Cal vs. Stanford
- Clemson vs. Florida State
- Florida State vs. Miami
- Miami vs. Virginia Tech
- NC State vs. Duke
- North Carolina vs. Duke
- North Carolina vs. NC State
- North Carolina vs. Virginia
- Pittsburgh vs. Syracuse
- SMU vs. Cal
- SMU vs. Stanford
- Virginia vs. Virginia Tech
- Wake Forest vs. Duke
- Wake Forest vs. NC State
- Georgia Tech and Louisville are the only two programs without a protected rivalry.
- The two programs coming from the Pac-12 each have a winning record against current ACC schools — Stanford is 11-10 while Cal is 13-11-1. SMU is 16-17-2 all-time vs. its new league-mates. Almost one-third of those games have been against Georgia Tech, which is 8-2-1 against the Mustangs.
- Florida State and Virginia are the only two teams in the league that have never played any of three new members.
Minimize travel headaches
Travel logistics were, understandably, among the chief concerns when the ACC first opted to add Cal, Stanford and SMU, and to some extent, they’re still going to be annoying for teams making cross-country trips. But credit to the ACC for at least attempting to minimize the time-zone-hopping that both its current and future members will have to do.
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The two West Coast schools will have to make only three eastward ventures per season, with their fourth conference away game either against one another or SMU. Similarly, only forcing current members out west three times in a seven-year span — and never in consecutive seasons — is about as ideal as possible. Still: Do you think anyone at Miami is excited about that 6.5-hour flight to Cal next season? Me neither. — Brendan Marks, ACC staff writer
What does this mean for SMU?
When Florida State visits Dallas in 2024, SMU football will officially feel back in the big time. This is a program that used to play Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and others annually in the Southwest Conference, but when the SWC collapsed in 1995-96, SMU was left in the wilderness of the WAC, Conference USA and the American. Now the Mustangs will host one of Florida State, Miami and Clemson in six of the next seven seasons. They won’t have natural rivalries, and annual games against Cal/Stanford won’t fill that, but the home schedule at Gerald J. Ford Stadium is going to change in a major way. The stadium has a capacity of 32,000, slightly larger than Wake Forest for the second-lowest in the ACC, and it’s currently undergoing renovations with a new end zone complex.
SMU’s central location was a key in easing Cal/Stanford travel, and the league is considering holding more events in Dallas as a hub. In the week after SMU announced its move to the ACC, the school said it had seen a 30 percent increase in basketball season tickets and hundreds of new football season tickets sold. Expect that to keep going up. — Chris Vannini, national college football reporter
Who got the best permanent opponents?
It’s a good time to be a school in the Triangle. North Carolina, Duke and NC State were the only three schools currently in the ACC that drew three permanent opponents each.
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The Tar Heels will keep their rivalries with NC State, Duke and Virginia. Duke has annual matchups with the Tar Heels, Wolfpack and Demon Deacons of Wake Forest. And NC State will play UNC, Wake Forest and Duke.
Bringing back the NC State-Wake Forest matchup on a permanent basis is a smart move by the league, which originally paired NC State with Clemson, Duke and North Carolina and Wake Forest with Duke, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech when the 3-5-5 model came out last year. Wake Forest and NC State have played 116 times and have met every year since 1910, the second-longest streak nationally.
Georgia Tech and Louisville, however, have zero protected matchups each. Louisville has never had natural rivals in the league, but it’s a bit of a surprise to see Georgia Tech get the short end of the stick. The Yellow Jackets have played Clemson every year since 1983 and 88 times total, dating back to 1898. Speaking of Clemson, the Tigers now have just one protected matchup in Florida State. We’ll miss the days of Clemson vs. NC State — usually an entertaining matchup with some sort of drama — playing every year.
It makes sense that Cal, Stanford and SMU will play each other every year — even if it’s a longer trip for the Mustangs. — Grace Raynor, national college football reporter
Miami-Virginia Tech is back!
Building a schedule with an uneven number of teams (17) has its challenges, but the league made the right decision in protecting 16 annual rivalry games, including Miami-Virginia Tech.
The former Big East rivals came to the league together in 2004 and played so many important games over the years but were somehow left off each other’s schedule when the ACC went to the 3-5-5 format a year ago. There were a lot of moans and groans over it. Credit Jim Phillips and league leaders for bringing it back. — Manny Navarro, Miami beat writer
Required reading
- By adding SMU, Cal and Stanford, the ACC sacrificed its basketball identity
- Mandel: ACC adding Stanford, Cal and SMU makes perfect sense and no sense at all
- SMU came back from the dead to join the ACC, and the Mustangs’ dreams don’t stop there
(Photo: G Fiume / Getty Images)