ACC in Serious Talks About Eliminating Divisions

CLEMSON, S.C. — There are lots of discussions going on this week as the Atlantic Coast Conference’s athletic administrators, football and basketball coaches come together for their annual spring meetings at Amelia Island in Fernandina Beach, Fla.

Name, image and likeness and the collectives surrounding it is a big part of the discussions, as is the transfer portal. Also on the docket, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, is football scheduling and the elimination of divisions.

According to Thamel’s timeline on Twitter, the ACC could eliminate divisions as early as 2023. He reported the league discussed this issue last week on calls to set up this week’s meetings.

One model being discussed is still playing eight conference games, with three of those games being permanent opponents and the other five opponents rotating off the schedule every other year.

Also, there are talks of having two permanent opponents with six teams rotating on and off the schedule. The idea behind these two models will allow ACC schools to host every conference foe every four years, which in turn will bring more variety to every school’s conference schedule.

Sources: Under discussion this week at ACC meetings will be the future of scheduling, including the potential to eliminate divisions as early as 2023. This was discussed last week on calls to set up the meetings.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) May 9, 2022

This comes on the heels of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee formerly recommending last month to the NCAA Division I Council that it adopt non-controversial legislation to remove the FBS requirements that must be met to annually exempt one conference championship contest.

This will provide discretion to each FBS conference to determine the method for identifying the participants in its conference championship game. In other words, Power Five conferences such as the ACC, Big Ten and SEC will no longer be required to have divisions in order to determine who plays in their conference championship games.

The Big Ten has discussed the likelihood of eliminating divisions as well.

This past February, ESPN’s Andrea Adelson reported ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips was “reimagining” football within the conference, which included eliminating divisions in college football.

The ACC got a feel for what a division-less league might look like in 2020, when Notre Dame was added for one year during the COVID season. The league was able to scrap its divisions that year and determined its championship participants based on the two squads that had the best record in the league.

The result was a top 5 match between No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 4 Clemson. The Tigers won the game, 34-10, capturing the program’s last of six straight ACC Championships.