Cal Sports Report

ACC to Announce 2024 Through 2030 Football Schedules Monday

Cal will face only eight of the 16 other teams in its new conference next season
Jake Curtis|
ACC to Announce 2024 Through 2030 Football Schedules Monday
ACC to Announce 2024 Through 2030 Football Schedules Monday

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California Golden Bears

Cal's first taste of its Atlantic Coast Conference membership will come on Monday afternoon, when the ACC will announce its football schedules for next seven years.

This a much bigger deal than the Pac-12 schedule announcements have been in past years, because the ACC will have 17 football schools starting in 2024.  Assuming the conference maintains its practice of playing only eight conference games each season, it means Cal will play only eight of the 16 possible opponents in 2024.

Will the Golden Bears play at Clemson?  Will Florida State be coming to Berkeley?  Will Cal miss a chance to play North Carolina and coach Mack Brown, the man who politicked Cal out of a berth in the Rose Bowl in the 2004 season? And when will Cal get an opportunity to play Notre Dame, which is not an ACC member in football but annually plays several ACC teams.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Monday's announcement is that it will take place at 3 p.m. Pacific time on the ACC Network.   I don't know about you, but I don't know many people out here who get the ACC Network now.  Presumably fans of Cal and Stanford will be eager to get that TV station when football action begins next fall. Start calling your local TV cable or satellite company now.

With ACC teams playing only about half the teams in the conference, the schedule will have a lot to do with which teams end up meeting in the ACC championship game.  

It will also determine how much traveling Cal will have to do.  A number of trips to the East Coast could take a toll on the players and the school's finances.  For example, if Cal is forced to play a road game at Boston College, it would require a flight covering five hours and 2,700 miles.

Cover photo by Rich Barnes, USA TODAY Sports

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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