Scheduling in the ACC has been a hot topic of late, and the league threw some news out onto the wires today that once again put speculation about new divisional alignments to rest. According to the press release, rotating crossover opponents for all football schools are now set in stone from 2014 through 2024.
Since the Orange have never engaged in divisional play in football, you may have some questions about what a "rotating crossover opponent" is and why we need one. Hopefully, I can address some of these up front, before we dive into Syracuse's crossovers.
ACC Football Schedule Construction (using Syracuse as an example):
1. Six games within the Atlantic Division (Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Louisville, NC State and Wake Forest, as of 2014); three home and three away each year (rotating)
2. One game against permanent divisional crossover rival from the Coastal Division: In Syracuse's case, this is non-rival Pittsburgh
3. One game against rotating non-Pittsburgh crossover opponent from the Coastal Division (Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami, North Carolina, Virginia, Virginia Tech); we play each of these teams just once every six years
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So using that model, and the graphic you see above (and embedded within the press release), we can now project out our ACC schedule from 2014 through 2024, with full knowledge of whom Syracuse will be playing and where. A glance at that:
2014
Home: Duke, Florida State, Louisville, NC State, Notre Dame (MetLife)
Road: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
2015
Home: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
Road: Florida state, Louisville, NC State, Virginia
2016
Home: Florida State, Louisville, NC State, Notre Dame (MetLife), Virginia Tech
Road: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
2017
Home: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
Road: Florida State, Louisville, Miami, NC State
2018
Home: Florida State, Louisville, NC State, North Carolina
Road: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
2019
Home: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
Road: Duke, Florida State, Louisville, NC State
2020
Home: Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, NC State
Road: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
2021
Home: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
Road: Florida State, Louisville, NC State, Virginia Tech
2022
Home: Florida State, Louisville, NC State, Virginia
Road: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
2023
Home: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
Road: Florida State, Louisville, NC State, North Carolina
2024
Home: Florida State, Louisville, Miami, NC State
Road: Boston College, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest
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Side notes:
- What's the point of being in the same conference if you don't even play a team twice in one decade?
- Virginia Tech gets an early rotational visit back to their house of horrors, the Carrier Dome.
- Tough to project out too far, but 2014 looks like a very interesting home slate.
- I know we complain about the MetLife games, but without them, there's no way we get two home dates with Notre Dame in the first three years of that arrangement. If we have to face the Irish on the road in that stretch, it's likely we're playing six road games in one of those seasons
What do you guys think? Anything else stick out while perusing this scheduling arrangement? Have you memorized who's in our division yet? Will you ever bother to do so?
