I thought it was worth a separate discussion topic to highlight the B1G's current conversations about potentially eliminating divisions and going back to an 8 game conference schedule.
The Big Ten is considering scheduling models that could eliminate divisions and reduce conference play to eight games, Iowa athletic director Gary Barta told The Athletic's Scott Dochterman.
The Big Ten plays a nine-game conference schedule that features six divisional and three cross-divisional games. However, the league could reevaluate its positioning after its media rights expire following the 2022 season.
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The Alliance adds another level of intrigue to the situation. The three involved conferences -- the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 -- expressed interest in scheduling nonconference matchups heading forward. Eliminating a conference game could be a way to free up extra opportunities for nonconference matchups, especially for a team like Iowa, which has a standing nonconference game against Iowa State.
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Hanging over the entire Alliance is the dominance of the SEC. The league has won five of the eight championships in the CFP era, including four unique champions. Ohio State and Clemson are the only schools in the Alliance to win a CFP game since 2015. With Texas and Oklahoma set to join the SEC, the gap may only be growing.
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There's been a number of outlets that have speculated what a divisionless schedule could look like for the ACC with 3 annual opponents. I think this is probably one of my favorites:
VT - UVa, Mia, Lou
UVa - VT, UNC, BC
Mia - FSU, Pitt, VT
FSU - Mia, Clem, GT
GT - Clem, Duke, FSU
Clem - GT, FSU, NC State
NC State - UNC, Clem, Wake
UNC - Duke, UVa, NC State
Duke - UNC, GT, Wake
Wake - NC State, Duke, BC
Lou - Pitt, Syr, VT
Pitt - Syr, Mia, Lou
Syr - Pitt, BC, Lou
BC - Syr, Wake, UVa
UVA and Miami are obviously musts. I wish our third was UNC but UNC's slate seems full. Maybe Pitt or GT.
Agree that UVA & Miami are the musts.
I honestly think that Louisville is a pretty good match for VT, as a public university with similar(ish) interests in athletics. There's the Big East history with Pitt and a moment in the late aughts/early 2010s where VT/GT was a significant Coastal game, but those are both private universities.
Other groupings I've seen have included Wake in VT's pod due to proximity to Winston-Salem, but I'm not crazy about that pairing. UNC would be ideal but they've got much deeper ties to the other three in their group.
If the ACC does end up going to a divisionless schedule, I hope that we always have a game against one of the NC teams since that's an important region for our alumni base and recruiting.
I'd take anyone as an upgrade over the forced BC BS, but the Techmo Bowl would be a good choice. Enough of a rivalry, a good city to visit, somewhere we recruit. With four NC teams in the conference you'd likely get one most years.
if it were me, I'd do it like this:
If you look at Google it tells you that there are traditional rivalries within the ACC that should remain intact. Now, those aren't well balanced across the league (e.g. North Carolina and Clemson each have 4, Louisville has 0)
So, in order to keep all those rivalries intact, there would need to be 4 permanently scheduled opponents for each team. That leaves 4 (8 game league schedule) or 5 (9 game league schedule) slots remaining for the remaining opponents in the league each season. If each team has 4 permanent opponents, that leaves 9 others within the league to play on a rotating basis. Going with an 8 game league schedule each team would play every team in the league at least once during a 3 year span (which is lightyears better than what we have now)
So, based on that, this is what the permanent opponents would look like: ("Traditional Rivals" will be in bold)
Boston College - Clemson, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Syracuse
Clemson - Boston College, Florida State, Georgia Tech, NC State
Duke - Louisville, North Carolina, Syracuse, Virginia Tech
Florida State - Clemson, Miami, NC State, Virginia
Georgia Tech - Clemson, Miami, Syracuse, Virginia Tech
Louisville - Boston College, Duke, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
Miami - Florida State, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech
North Carolina - Duke, NC State, Virginia, Wake Forest
NC State - Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina, Wake Forest
Pittsburgh - Boston College, Louisville, Miami, Syracuse
Syracuse - Boston College, Duke, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh
Virginia - Florida State, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest
Virginia Tech - Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami, Virginia
Wake Forest - Louisville, North Carolina, NC State, Virginia
Then you just fill in the rest of the schedule with other teams on a rotating basis. This could be done either way (8 or 9 game league schedule) and leave plenty of room for OOC games each year without disrupting traditional rivalries within the league. Take the two highest ranked teams with the best conference records for the ACC CG and go from there.
8 Conference Games,
1 Game Versus B1G - Rotates Annually - Here and Away
1 Game Versus PAC - Rotates Annually - Here and Away
1 Game Versus SEC - Rotates Annually - Here and Away
1 Tune up game. Home
Forgot ND in there. Guess tune up games are ND when those occur.
nah, I say fuck ND. They only care about themselves and until they're willing to join a league as a full member I think they can go rot for all I care. Kick them off our schedule totally. We'll only play them if they join either the Pac, the B1G or the ACC. Otherwise, they can kick rocks.
ND is regularly overrated, so when we have a football team again, I won't mind playing them.
*Big 12 to replace the SEC. Screw those turds
That was my thought as well but
FSU-Florida
GT- Georgia Tech
Clemson - South Carolina.
Louisville-Kentucky
Did I forget any?
Man this is old news. We been talking about pod scheduling since they were Leaders and Legends
I know the "Alliance" adds some intrigue for potential OOC matchups, but I can't help but think the ACC will take a big backseat to anything the Big Ten and PAC-12 want to do with their history. Hopefully I'm wrong though.
As far as this type of model for the ACC, it needs to happen badly. Andy Bitter tweeted that our upcoming game at NC State is the first time we have played in Raleigh since 2010. That's just unacceptable for schools in the same conference and within a few hours drive of each other. As a matter of fact, we have only played NC State 6 times in now 18 years in the ACC. If the new commissioner is serious about growing the football profile of the league and generating tv revenue, the school needs more frequent matchups between its best football brands. We need to be playing NCSU, Clemson, FSU, Louisville every other year at least.
yes the current scheduling is absolutely bonkers and I can't believe there aren't serious proposals out there to fix it soon (the new commish hasn't impressed me much, tbh)
And you might be right about the B1G and the PAC12 playing big brother roles to the ACC but that could favor the ACC if they're clever about it. The B1G and PAC12 are going to want marquis matchups which they will get. That will leave the lesser teams from each league as the scraps for the ACC. If the ACC can manage to win those games and have an overall better record against the two other leagues that could go a long way to changing the perception about the league. And perception matters. A lot of folks were talking about how the SEC was head and shoulders above everyone else way before they actually were head and shoulders above everyone else. All that talk shifted the perception enough to make it a reality. The ACC could leverage an easy lineup against the B1G and PAC to build up that perception and turn it into reality. It's a long shot though. Our leadership is poop. Just look at our scheduling fiasco.
Even if the ACC beat up on the lower PAC/Big teams, I imagine the national narrative would still be, "yeah but they just beat up on bad teams." The SEC does this crap all the time when they lose games, like this past bowl season where they had a terrible record overall but it didn't matter because they weren't marquee teams/weren't motivated.
The ACC needs to scrap divisions and have more variety of games. The football brands need to play each other more often so they see better competition and can start winning more big OOC games. Beating up on Indiana or Rutgers won't move the needle. More appealing ACC matchups weekly on tv leads to more eyeballs, and will lead to better perception and rankings likely as well.
100% this. Iron sharpens Iron. I know we've been down bad for a minute, but when we were up we should have been playing Clemson almost yearly. The conference as a whole is never going to get better having FSU, Clemson, Miami, and VT only occasionally playing.
And this is the thing that gets overlooked - some people argue that you can't scrap divisions just when one is down and things will cycle back. Unfortunately, that's just not the case in the ACC. The historic football brands of the conference (Clemson, FSU, Miami, and VT) don't play each other often enough, and most casual viewers see those brands as the best football product of the conference, even when the program may be down. It works for the SEC because you have Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia in the East that are strong brands and attract eyeballs, even when those programs have been down and the West was stronger. And you can't do geography with the ACC, it just doesn't work. I think the original intent was balancing the divisions, but the top to bottom quality of football brands in the ACC isn't there.
We need those four teams to play more often and hopefully get their act together on the field. Then you throw in NC State which has built a solid program, Louisville which has had football success in recent years, and maybe UNC and Pitt in the mix, and you have a compelling product. We just need those names matching up against each other more frequently.
Other than the SEC which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, the big championship game models have rarely worked out. The Big Ten West just provides the annual beat down team for OSU/Michigan/PSU. They had better balance before they went East-West but Legends and Leaders was corny. The ACC has never gotten an FSU-Miami championship game as they wanted, and the highest caliber game they've had was ND-Clemson in a year with no divisions.
Agreed, you can't even think that a prime-time Clemson v VT(when were back) night game in Lane isn't going to get mega ratings yet that game virtually never happens. I honestly hope Miami rebounds just for how good those games were. (hoping a rival rebounds is weird btw)
I really think you have to build the other way. If VT plays UM and Clemson plays FSU and we have two 12-0 and two 11-1 teams at the end it would be great for the ACC from a media stand point. It wouldn't matter if the next best team in the ACC has 7 wins. Thats the narrative the SEC used 20 years ago. Most of their champions skipped the best teams in the conference in the early part of this century.
Once you establish that VT, Clemson, FSU, and Miami are good again, then you can play eachother. But you need that narrative that the teams are good. Once you have that you can argue that an 8-4 VT team is really good.
Fair point, but you need them to play so you can establish that "It's because they play nothing but big dogs, that's why they slipped up this week" narrative to explain dropping one to garbage. Maybe the correct move is the current way and move to the rotation strategy after Miami, VT, and FSU rebound (fully expecting this to happen).
You can't have the narrative of playing nothing but big dogs until you have more than 1 big dog. VT was known for winning lots of game in the 2000s but we rarely beat anyone of worth, didn't matter we were still a big game for lots of teams.
I prefer some sort of divisions in conferences, especially if you have more teams than available games. That way, every team is represented in some way in the conference championship.
Not having divisions runs the risk of multiple teams in contention for the top two spots with no clear tiebreakers.
Then you have to clearly establish more levels of tiebreakers. The Big 12 in past years (2008, 2014) has to be a cautionary tale against such laziness.
Except the Big 12 has a full round robin schedule. 2014 was just them trying to play the system, but they have a goofball for a commissioner.
Back when the Big Ten had 11 teams and no championship game, there were a couple of seasons where they had two or three teams all at the top of the standings who managed to avoid each other.
2014 was so dumb and there was no need for them to add a conf championship game when every team plays each other.
Sidenote: TCU should have been in and would have won the playoff that year, even beating OSU if they were still in