Which teams benefit, which are disadvantaged by the schedule?
Will ACC teams play on a level field in 2020? | Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images
When the ACC came up with the 2020 football schedule version 2.0, every team was supposed to get two bye weeks while playing an 11-game season. However, now some non-conference cancellations have, in effect, resulted in extra byes for certain teams which may end up playing 10 games instead of 11. This of course creates an non-level playing field, but the question remains which teams benefit?
To answer that, let’s first take a look at the byes as they stand today:
The first thing you probably notice is that some teams - thanks to those cancelled non-conference games - currently have three byes while others have only two. Since this is a Pitt website, you’ll also notice - if you haven’t already - that one of the Panthers’ three “byes” is actually the final week of the season. That was bound to happen to some team since there are an odd number of teams playing ACC football this season - unless someone played a non-conference game in the final weekend. That was never likely to happen, though, given the fact that the Big Ten isn’t playing at all, the SEC isn’t playing any non-conference games, and both the Big XII and the ACC are only playing home games out of conference.
However, even with the holes in the schedule, every team gets either two or three weeks off - a difference of only one week at most. A much bigger source of variation is the number of teams which get a bye before playing your team, which I’ve tabulated here:
The team getting the most-rested opponents is the Florida State Seminoles - nearly half of their ACC opponents are coming off a bye or a cancelled OOC game! The Clemson Tigers, Duke Blue Devils, Louisville Cardinals, North Carolina Tar Heels, and Pittsburgh Panthers all face three teams which aren’t scheduled to play the week before.
The Miami Hurricanes, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Syracuse Orange, Virginia Cavaliers and the Virginia Tech Hokies all get the prescribed two teams coming off byes. That is the number of byes originally baked into the schedule, after all.
However, there are four teams which only face a single opponent with extra rest: the Boston College Eagles, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, NC State Wolfpack and the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. I don’t expect any of those to contend for a conference championship this year, but it’s certainly possible that they could upset a contender - particularly if they are the more rested squad.
By the way, some may take exception to my listing Pitt’s final bye before the ACC Championship Game. This is really a provisional bye - it only helps the Panthers if they actually end up playing for the conference football title, but if they do, you can be sure whoever they play will cry how unfair it is that Pitt players get an extra week to rest!
BOTTOM LINE: In a “normal” football season the ACC has guidelines designed to prevent uneven bye week distribution. However, this is no ordinary year, and neither is it a “normal” schedule. Hopefully bye weeks don’t decide anything important, but in 2020 I’ve learned not to be too quick to dismiss any possibility!
