An interesting tweet from ESPN College Football
ACC officials raise idea in which conf. would play 8 league games and 1 SEC team every year - sources— ESPN CollegeFootball (@ESPNCFB) February 7, 2014
I love the idea. Here are the current annual ACC/SEC matchups:
FSU/UF
GT/UGA
Louisville/Kentucky
Wake/Vanderbilt
Clemson/South Carolina
These happen every year for rivalry purposes and make sense from a logistical/geographical standpoint.
But past those five and VT/Tennessee, there are very few SEC teams relatively close to ACC teams.
So do assign rivals and continue on? Do we make VT/Tennessee annual (PLZ) and rotate the remaining 8 matchups each year? Or, do we assign matchups each year based on last years standings/next years projections ala the ACC/B1G Challenge?
Remaining ACC Teams:
Duke
UNC
NCST
UVA
Miami
BC
Syracuse
Pittsburgh
Remaining SEC Teams:
Alabama
Auburn
LSU
Miss. St.
Ole Miss
Arkansas
Texas A&M
Mizzou
Discuss below!
Comments
I love this idea. Both conferences are known for playing great football right now, and the SEC - ACC rivalry is a great narrative.
VT-Tennessee every year please.
Frankly, I think the ACC/B1G Challenge set up makes the most sense, but I don't see FSU & Clemson agreeing to give up their annual matchups.
HOWEVER, I also don't see the Carolina schools agreeing to travel out to Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, & Missouri every other year.
Also, this would prevent us from playing 9 conference games, of which I'm a big proponent. I hate that we only get to play FSU, Clemson, & Louisville twice every 12 years.
They would travel every other year, right? Alternating between being the home team and the road team.
This idea has been floated around for a long time. I think most ACC fans would love seeing an SEC school at home every two years. And you can imagine the awesomeness of a weekend in September with 5 or 6 ACC/SEC games, then that final regular season weekend with games like USC/Clemson - a BLITZ of ACC/SEC games if you will :-)
I'd be curious to hear what SEC fans think about this? And ignoring the hairy logistics of scheduling something like this, what are the fears on both sides for something like this?
For VT I'd actually love an annual matchup against Texas A&M more than a matchup against Tennessee. Texas A&M has a ton in common with VT. Also gets VT out into a national matchup rather than regional. Also gives potential to recruit out in Texas some, get those OL wherever you can find them.
UT has been ducking VT for years so don't think they'd want the annual, think it might take away from the Battle at Bristol as well.
Think some of the league could keep a yearly permanent partner and others might want to rotate.
i would prefer to rotate through the SEC, or at least base it on previous standings. playing tennessee would be fun, but so is playing aTm, LSU, auburn, etc...
either way, i think it's a great idea.
Strike while the iron is hot!
SEC (and everyone else) would have laughed at this idea a year ago...
To be the best you have to beat the best - WTG ACC!
If they were to match them up on a permanent basis, these would be what I would want to see:
Virginia Tech/Texas A&M (Corps vs Corps games)
Duke/Auburn
UNC/Tennessee
NCST/Miss St
UVA/Mizzou
Miami/LSU
BC/Arkansas
Syracuse/Ole Miss
Pittsburgh/Alabama
I would love to see matchups against Tennessee, Texas A&M, and Georgia. All sorts of geographical, historical, and style reasons for those games.
I like those but also would like to see us play West Virginia. I used to get pumped for those games.
I just tried to do permanent pairings and it was way too forced. There's only a few that make sense: VT/A&M, VT/Tenn, UNC/Tenn, maybe OleMiss/LOLUVA, maybe Miami/LSU. It seems like other than the current permanent match-ups plus a couple more everything else would have to rotate.
The rotation then creates way too many questions in itself - Is Alabama or LSU really willing to travel and play at Duke or BC? I don't see that happening. Maybe there will be more neutral site games.
I would prefer everybody in the ACC to push for the annual regional matchups regardless of conference. Pitt should be playing PSU and/or WVU every year. Syracuse could be playing PSU or Rutgers. Some schools don't seem to have natural out of conference rivals - Duke, NCState, & BC (which had Notre Dame).
Alabama just played at Duke recently...i think they are willing to take their teams into new markets to spread the brand, esp if it is against teams they consider "easy" wins.
Awesome idea...JW has been a proponent of this for a few years btw.
I'll go one step further...
Five 'BCS' conferences, 14 teams each.
Each year there are Five 'Conference challenges' where teams play based on the previous year's finish. Each conference plays each other on a rotating schedule.
I know this will never happen, but this would be great. It will be much easier to rank teams (mathematically) and assess the strength of given conference. There will be many high profile games.
EDIT: I thought this applied to you as well
I think this is a terrific idea. FSU, GT, and Clemson already have standing SEC rivalries and it's easy to see why they are against play a 9-game conference schedule plus an SEC rival and maybe Notre Dame. That's an 11-game gauntlet even the best program would have a difficult time of going undefeated against.
However, what motivation would there be for the SEC to get onboard with this? What's in it for them?
a lot of SEC schools are also against an SEC 9 game schedule. i'm guessing many of them would rather take their chances against the ACC than the SEC. and Kentucky, Georgia, USC-e, and Florida would probably all be happy NOT to have another game scheduled for them as well...
I realize that most SEC programs don't have much concern in this regard but I'm gonna say: Recruiting.
The ACC and SEC are in direct competition with each other regarding recruits. And now that the ACC has toppled the giant before any other conference could that competition could start to get a lot more intense.
Could be wrong but I think it's enough reasoning.
I hope this works out! Here is the full espn article on it...
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/10419715/acc-eyes-schedul...
Any ACC team should want to play Auburn. This is hard to believe, but Auburn has not won a football game at a non-conference team's home field since they beat the Yahoos in Charlottesville in 1997. That was in the previous century. What makes this worse is they have only played 6 games on a non-conference team's home field during that time. They usually schedule 4 home games each year with non-conference teams, so they wind up playing only 4 away games a year and those are required SEC games. They wil play at Kansas State this year to try and break their 16 year drought. Bring this up to an Auburn fan and they can't believe it.
I'd love to see this more than just about anything. We've loaded up on Big Ten teams for the next forever and I'd rather generate rivalries with SEC teams. Having said that, besides the Bees, FSU, and Clemson, I don't think there are any other good natural rivalries, so I'd think we should rotate everyone else.
The idea that popped into my head with playing an SEC team is the whole 5 power conferences setting up their own national title without any NCAA type of involvement.
I think this is just a small step in what we'll see, which is all 5 power conferences playing teams from each other conference.
Isn't Wake/Vandy going away? Even the article only mentions 4 rivalries.
ACC/SEC? Yes please.