So we have UConn to ACC chatter and PAC10/ACC chatter. What if both are happening? UConn joins the ACC as #15 in FB and #16 in BBall. That will make scheduling easy for all involved. The PAC10 teams play one ACC FB team a year and 3-4 ACC BBall teams a year. The two leagues pool their content for the TV contract but remain separate outside of the scheduling agreement.
In FB, combined the two would offer ESPN 40 PAC10 conference games, 60 ACC conference games, 10 PAC10 vs ACC games, 3 Notre Dame games (5 ACC games + Stanford), 12 PAC10/ACC vs B1G/B12/SEC games, and any G5 home games. That comes out to 100 conference games, 22 intersectional games, and 3 ND games for a total of 125 P5 FB games. Also the ACCN would have games from noon until 2am.
In BBall, combined the two would offer 90 PAC10 conference games, 160 ACC conference games, 32 PAC10 vs ACC games, and any other home games. That comes out to 250 conference games, and at a minimum 32 intersectional games for a total of 282 P5 BBall games.
For FB scheduling the PAC10 would play only 8 games, so they play 8 out of 9 teams in a given year. If you split the conference into two groups of 5, you end up playing the 4 teams in your group yearly, one cross over yearly, and the other 4 teams you play 3x over 4 years. So splitting it up geographically and allowing every team a Cali game...
Group A
Washington, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington State, Cal
Group B
Utah, Arizona, Arizona State, Stanford, Colorado
If they wanted to they could even have a PAC10 CG with one team from each group, or they could just take the top 2 teams.
The ACC for FB scheduling can use 4 permanent rivals and rotate the rest of the teams. So you play everyone home and away over 5 years. That is way better than the old 12 years but not as nice as the future 4 years. Also it adds back some of the lost rivals from the division to 3 perm system switch. SU would most likely get UConn as our 4th team, and if we are lucky FSU grabs BC or UConn instead of us so we get them off our yearly. Then we can get someone like Virginia Tech or Miami.
For the PAC10 and ND games you can split the ACC geographically. So three groups made up of one Southern team, one NC team, one Mid-Atlantic team, one Northeastern team, and one Western team. That keeps ND happy as they get a little of everything yearly. So we would have something like...
Group A
Clemson, Duke, Georgia Tech, BC, Virginia Tech
Group B
UNC, Cuse, Louisville, Miami, UVA
Group C
FSU, Pitt, NC State, Wake, UConn
Year 1 ND gets ACC Group A, PAC10 Group A gets ACC Group B, and PAC10 Group B gets ACC Group C. Then year 2 ND gets ACC Group B, PAC10 Group A gets ACC Group C, and PAC10 Group B gets ACC Group A. Finally year 3 ND gets ACC Group C, PAC10 Group A gets ACC Group A, and PAC10 Group B gets ACC Group B.
For the PAC10 vs ACC games you can go by prior year standings. For instance in that year 1 we would see based off of last year something like...
UNC vs Washington
Cuse vs Oregon
Louisville vs Oregon State
Miami vs Washington State
Cal vs UVA
FSU vs Utah
Pitt vs Arizona
NC State vs Arizona State
Wake vs Stanford
UConn vs Colorado
In theory you could be playing the same team again 3 years later. Alternatively you could allow ESPN to pick the matchups within each group. For example Oregon and Miami would play instead. But that increases the risk of duplicate games in 3 years.
I suppose if they agreed to rotate, it isn't so bad. Especially if ESPN offers more money. For example they can group and rotate Oregon, Washington, Miami, UNC and then rotate the rest amongst each other. That would prevent us from seeing the same PAC10 team over and over. So we would see Cal, Oregon State, and Washington State one time each over 9 years, but never see Oregon or Washington.
Or they could just do a pure rotation. So over 15 years we play every PAC10 team once.
In BBall the PAC10 would play everyone in conference both home and away. The ACC you can split into four regions. You play everyone once, your region a 2nd time, and then you leave 2 games for either a cross over rival (like UNC and UVA) or for ESPN to schedule at will. The groups would be...
Northeast
Cuse, UConn, BC, Notre Dame
West
Louisville, Pitt, Virgina Tech, UVA
Carolina
UNC, Duke, NC State, Wake
South
Miami, FSU, Georgia Tech, Clemson
For the PAC10 vs ACC games the ACC teams get one home game and one away game. They get one team from each of the prior PAC10 FB Groups. That will allow you to play every PAC10 over 5 years and everyone home and away over 10 years. As an example SU would see something like...
Year 1/6: Washington and Utah
Year 2/7: Oregon and Arizona
Year 3/8: Oregon State and Arizona State
Year 4/9: Washington State and Stanford
Year 5/10: Colorado and Cal
For the PAC10, 8 of the teams would be playing 3 ACC teams and 2 of the teams would be playing 4. The ACC teams would have 22 games between conference and PAC10. While the PAC10 would have 21 or 22 games between conference and ACC.
I think these moves would be the best thing for all involved, at least until the end of the GOR. It also would make the ACC and PAC10 clearly ahead of the B12 financially.
