The ACC announced today that they will play a nine game conference football schedule when Pittsburgh and Syracuse join the league. The two schools are currently slated to join the ACC in 2014.
ACC Commissioner John Swofford also announced today that Syracuse will join the Atlantic Division and Pittsburgh will join the Coastal Division. Current ACC division crossover games will remain intact, while Pittsburgh and Syracuse will become crossover partners.
When Pitt and Syracuse join the ACC, the league will play a nine-game conference schedule. The format will consist of each team playing all six in its division each year, plus its primary crossover partner each year and two rotating opponents from the opposite division. This six-year cycle allows each team to play each divisional opponent and its primary crossover partner six times (three home and three away) while also playing each rotating crossover opponent two times (one home and one away).
“We have been engaged in discussions on the various options for integrating Pitt and Syracuse since early fall,” said ACC Commissioner John Swofford. “It’s a tremendous tribute to the leadership at our schools that we will be able to seamlessly add Pitt and Syracuse at the appropriate time when they become full playing members.”
With the addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse, here is how the ACC Atlantic and Coastal Divisions will look:
ACC Atlantic
ACC Coastal
Those divisions are really strange. They need to go to a North/South setup…
ACC North: Boston College, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Maryland, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest
ACC South: Duke, North Carolina, NC State, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Florida State, Miami
why can’t everyone else agree
your idea is perfect
Sounds better than the current setup.
The ACC South would be way too strong compared to an ACC North
Part of the original contract to bring in miami, bc and vt was to break up the north carolina block. Plus the acc leaders thought there would be a few florida state and miami championship match ups.
My money says cuse and pitt will be in acc in 2013 after everything is settled !
But if they did the North South setup, The South would be way to stacked with GT, Clemson, FSU, and Miami.
it would just be like the sec west or the old big 12 south.
cept then the north would be UNC, Virginia, VT, Pittsburg. UNC = GT, VT=FSU, Pittsburg = Clemson, Virginia< Miami (but a little)… I think it would be pretty fair
I think they need to do a true longitude finding… then divide them up…
A true “Coastal” and “Atlantic region” feel…
Think of a tidal wave rolling in from the east… what would be the first 7 schools hit???
Scratch that idea… I used the coordinates of each school and this is how it would look…
Atlantic = GT, FSU, Clemson, Wake, The U, Va Tech and Pitt
Coastal = BC, Terps, Pack, Cuse, Duke, Heels and Cavs
Your Atlantic division is way too strong
Is anyone else frustrated with the ACC’s practice of putting fans last in scheduling decisions? You cannot plan to attend a football game, stay overnight, or see friends with such short notice of actual game times. TV revenues come first, fans last these days. It is past Valentine’s day and we are still waiting for the fall schedules so we can schedule other events.
The lack of actual game times until the last minute is not an ACC problem…it’s an ESPN problem, and happens no matter what conference you’re in.
Agree with Susan….can’t believe it takes so long to put the schedule together. Would be nice to be able to book hotels for away games at places like Clemson that fill up so fast.
AGREE 100% The ACC leadership SUCKS!! We need a North/South division. Each division would have more common rivals. With VT,Pitt,BC and (Virginia and Maryland) will be VERY competitive in a year or two. Maimi has done nothing!! so in the South you have Clemson, FSU, GT, UNC,NCST..SOUND EQUAL TO ME….Plus ALOT BETTER FOOTBALL !!!!
FSU and the “EWE” will never be in the same division. The ACC wants to keep that available for a potential ACC Championship game. That’s assuming that the “EWE” ever makes it back to the big time.
will these be the same conferences in basketball?
Ryan, I’m pretty sure they’re not going to separate divisions for basketball – this would just be for football.
these divisions are so confaluted, the acc changed how many years ago and I still can’t tell you how it aligns. I know in the pac12 all the schools want games in southern california so Im sure all the schools want access to games in florida. still I think I like apples schedule other than put unc in the north and wf in the south, unc is generally a stronger team so that would balance a little more.
how about putting the old big east in one division: bc,pitt,syr,vt,mia
for balance these teams seperate divisions with cross rival
‘south acc northeast acc
clemson gt
fsu mia
nc st unc
duke syr
uva vt
md bc
wf pitt
not perfect but at least the northeast gets a guaranteed florida,georgia and carolina game every other year
They’re trying to keep the original contacts in tact. When they expanded the north carolina block was to be split in two because those were the weakest teams at the time and miami and fl state were to be different divisions because of the championship game predictions. If 16 teams ever come there would be a huge realignment. After that everything was decided by tv and recruiting markets.
I’m not convinced that moving to nine-game conference schedules is a good idea. It provides far less flexibility for teams to either strengthen or weaken their overall schedule (depending on how good or bad they are) and on the expansion front, it provides a strong disincentive for Notre Dame to consider joining the ACC.
Given that, I’d also have different divisions. I’d like North-South but it would just be too unbalanced. I’d probably do one of these two setups (rivals listed together):
BC — Syracuse
Pitt — MD
VT — UVA
NCSU — UNC
Wake — Duke
GT — Clemson
Miami — FSU
or:
BC — Syracuse
Pitt — MD
UVA — VT
UNC — NCSU
Duke — Wake
Clemson — GT
Miami — FSU
The major downside to a North/South division is that it would recreate the old Big East in the north, but add Maryland and UVA, which I’m sure would piss both of them off. Meanwhile, I’m sure VT and BC don’t want to go back to playing the same teams they did in the Big East days, because that was part of the reason for moving.
One factor that seems to be forgotten. Maryland is leaving the ACC and joining the Big Ten. So any realignment has to be put on hold. How does Notre Dame fit in?