Boston College and Pittsburgh may not move the needle, but its obvious they would be the closest thing to football rivals we have. Thus, playing them annually should happen I would like Virginia over Louisville, but either of them would be fine. The benefit of this model is every team host one another over 4 years and that is great.
If the ACC is going to maximize having 3 teams north of the Mason-Dixon, we need all 3 to play annually. Their regional ties need to be maintained and used to bring in ever more northeasterners as ans of ACC football.
Here is my latest attempt to deal with this. I posted it on the Louisville Scout board. I was wrong about the 8 game schedule definitely being kept, but going to 9 poses major issues that could lead to backlash, so anybody demanding 9 just to play politics to try to get a favorable deal in some way better be careful -
It now seems a given that the ACC proposal to de-regulate the way conferences larger than 11 may schedule and decide who plays in a Championship Game is going to pass. The Big 12 is co-sponsor, and the change would allow it to hold a Championship with just 10 teams, or 11 if they add 1.
For us, and I think for the Pac and Big Ten, the main issue is freedom to schedule other than based on 2 divisions that each play an annual round robin. It would mean we schedule with no divisions, cutting back the number of annual rivals so that everyone is played often.
In case you haven't thought about the problem, as the system now operates, we all will play Notre Dame more often than we play full members of ACC football who are not annual rivals. UNC, for example, will play ND more often than we play FSU and Clemson.
Going 8-10 years between meetings in conference games is not a good thing. And this change in NCAA regulations will allow us to make things better. It will keep the entire league refreshed, with new teams rotating on the ACC schedule at least every 2 years.
All signs indicate that we are keeping an 8 game conference schedule. If we each have 3 annual rivals, we will play the other 10 teams in the conference 2 times every 4 years. We will see every team at least twice every 4 years.
That seems to me to be close to ideal. None of us have more than 3 teams we
must play each year. Each of us now plays annual games against 2 or 3 schools that our fans would not mind seeing less often, and each of us have fans who would greatly prefer to play a team or two or three more often than the old NCAA rules allow.
Below is my list of 3 annual rivals for each full member of ACC football. It starts with the
MUST PLAY games, based on history (like The South's Oldest Rivalry and GT-Dook) and the need to maximize TV interests and deal with SEC rivalries (which is the reason I have FSU playing GT annually), and then taking account of Thanksgiving weekend season ending games.
All teams should play every Thanksgiving weekend so no one ever plays in the Championship after a bye week. We have 4 teams that will end the season versus SEC in-state rivals (FSU, GT, Clemson, and Louisville). UVA and VT must end the season. So must the 4 NC schools, though it might be interesting to have that rotate, so that in some years UNC closes with Dook while MooU closes with Wake, and in other years UNC closes with MooU while Dook closes with Wake.
That leaves 4 teams who need an annual season ending game: Miami, Pitt, Syracuse, and BC. BC and Cuse, as border state schools, probably should close the season, which would leave Miami closing with Pitt.
With all that in mind, here is my list:
BC - Syracuse, Pitt, Wake
Syracuse - BC, Pitt, Louisville
Pitt - BC, Syracuse, Miami
Louisville - VT, Syracuse, UVA
UVA - UNC, VT, Louisville
VT - UVA, Louisville, Miami
UNC - UVA, Dook, MooU
Dook - UNC, Wake, GT
MooU - UNC, Wake, Clemson
Wake - Dook, MooU, BC
Clemson - GT, FSU, MooU
GT - Clemson, FSU, Dook
FSU - Miami, Clemson, GT
Miami - FSU, Pitt, VT
