There will be a meeting Monday of all Athletic Directors to determine if this means an 8 ACC + 2 OOC or 9 ACC + 1 OOC Format. It is believed the majority are leaning towards the 9 + 1 Format to reduce scheduling issues.
As the Hokies have experienced multiple times in the last twenty years with marquee matchup agreements getting delayed or outright cancelled I would expect the Hokies to vote for 9 + 1. If that happens who would we want in our rotation of OOC games?
Does a 9+1 limit matchups and potentially water down further how the ACC is viewed from the outside?
Does the ACC get additional money like the SEC from ESPN for adding a 9th conference game or penalized? As of now it does not appear to benefit from this from ESPN based on initial reports.
How does Notre Dame factor in this?
How do the 17 ACC schools get 9 conference games?
How often do you think ACC teams will pursue more than one OOC opponent in this format?
How often might we see more games like UVA playing NC State as OOC games? If this becomes a trend I would think the ACC profile continues to diminish.
Comments
I would much rather have the 8-2 but as stated you'd have to have that mandated in each conference and I know certain conferences really like to stick to their cake walk ooc games so I doubt it happens. A 9th in conference game with the growing conference isn't so bad and maybe it keeps us from scheduling (and losing) games to bad fbs and fcs schools.
Can we implement this asap and replace jmu with literally anyone else so I don't have to live through losing through them twice.
The Notre Dame agreement actually helps us a lot here. There's ways to get this to work out mathematically. In off cases where you can't get everyone to 10 maybe you include Boise, Tulane, Memphis and the last 4 G5 playoff reps
I would expect the schools with yearly SEC rivalry games (FSU,GT, Clemson, UL) to vote for the 9+1 so their OOC P4 requirement is already met. Would also guess that they would want guarantees that they get 5 home/4 away conference games when their SEC rival is an away game. Remaining 2 games are home games with cupcakes. Might reduce the chances of those teams playing in big OOC matchups other than their rivals at neutral sites.
As stated, with other P4 conferences switching to 9+1, the 8+2 model becomes a nightmare for scheduling. 9+1 just makes it easier.
Also reduces the chances of teams scheduling no P4 opponents and/or 2 FCS schools in a season.
I remain steadfast in my affirmation that VT should be playing WVU every year. So set that up and we have our schedule figured for the next few years.
Hopefully that's why we dropped multiple ODU games, to arrange something like this
would this be the minimum or the maximum? I.e. for the 9+1 could a team schedule a 9+2?
I believe that who you schedule for the other 2 is up to you. Some years could be 2 cupcakes (is there such a thing for VT?) while other years get a kickoff classic type event against another P4 and one cupcake.
This would be the minimum.
Better be 8+2 in our position we need to win more cross conference games due to perception, adding another conference game only hurts us.
Alos those noncon games would likely get better views than most of our extra conference games so the money argument doesn't play here
Right now it appears ESPN does not intend to pay the ACC more for 10 P4 games. SEC on the other hand is expected to see a $3-4M increase per school for going to 9+1 because of course we need to widen that gap.
Nine conference games discourages big OOC scheduling and I think that is a capital B, Bad thing.
8+2 is a much better model, and it's what EVERY P4 conference should be doing.
Yeah long term it hurts the sport in exchange for a short term money grab for the SEC, (and insanely short term money grab for the Big 10 that already happened)
Correct, but the need to move to 9 conference games became inevitable with the conferences expanding so much
Fewer required games against the worst conference in the P4 please.
Sorry for dredging up this old thread, but whatever happened with this?
Also, the real reason for my post: has anyone noticed that our 2026 future football schedule has 13 opponents on it? A typo? Or are we vying for a quicker return to a 10-win season? 😂
A lot of discussion here about the ACC's uneven scheduling for 2026. We have picked up a conference game next year, so we will have to drop an OOC matchup.
ACC next season announced a convoluted mix of this. There will be some teams still playing 8+2 and others playing 9+1. Thirteen is not unheard of but its expected since Hokies are in 9+1 group that they will be dropping an OOC game.
So what is everyone rooting for? Dropping ODU or @Maryland?
I'm kind of torn because I want revenge on both!
Well we can't drop UMD, that's the only OOC P4 game.
That, and Franklin's mission to absolutely destroy Maryland any chance he gets.
Don't think it warrants it's own thread but VT just announced they are canceling the JMU game on Sept 26th due to changes to the ACC schedule. That was going to be a home game. I'm guessing it'll be replaced by an ACC road game.
Apparently it does.
https://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2026/january/14/2026-game-jmu-cancell...
Yeah, what kind of idiot did that
Don't like it.
VMI game can only hurt us. At best, they're too easy, tempts our crew to play easy and get cocky with a big win.
JMU with new coach NapiHead would have been a good game, plus we woulda played all the top VA FB programs in same year.
Huge missed opportunity.
"we woulda played all the top VA FB programs in same year."
We would have ODU and JMU? Wait, Hoo else is a top VA FB program?
We play the BooHoos EVERY year.
So who would you rank above VT, UVA, JMU, and ODU.....Liberty? Richmond?
Is that a rhetorical question about who we'd rank above the Hoos? There are no wrong answers.
None of them....Now.
Oh my initial comment was just joking that the Hoos do not qualify as a major program.
Although, if you are really objective based on the last few years, we would be - at best - 5th in the state. JMU and UVA were way better than us. Liberty and ODU were better as well. Don't care that we upset Liberty that one game. No idea how good Richmond was, but if we played them near the end of last season, who knows?
Going forward and on paper for 2026 season, we look a lot better. But based on the last couple of years, yeah we were 5th at best.
he said top VA football teams, commanders would destroy everyone else on the list.
commanders play in MD
But are based in VA
But will reportedly move to DC when new stadium and Facilities are built and Commanders park will become another data center.
They're moving to Phoenix? 😏
Edit: Added the quote.
VCU football > loluva football IYGMD
I just looked at VT's future schedules on HokieSports.com and see that the only known ACC game each year is LOLUVA. I guess this means with the new 9-game ACC schedule we now only have one rival instead of the two (Miami and LOLUVA). This changing of rivals wasn't mentioned in the ACC news release.
I prefer to hold onto Miami, but I suppose they won't ask me.
Cristobal looked at what Franklin is doing, thought about how lucky they have been to beat us when we were terrible #goACC and said pwetty pwease take that big bad putty cat away from me.
Or maybe HokieSports noticed that the ACC has given us a new future schedule 3 times over the last 3 years and got tired of changing it.