ACC Thinking Outside The Box On 2020 Schedule
With the Big Ten and Pac-12 announcing a conference-only football schedule, the pressure is on for the other Power Five conferences to make a decision on their upcoming seasons.
In a story written by David Teel of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, ACC athletic directors are mulling the possibility of its 14 football-playing schools, and Notre Dame, being split into three five-team geographic pods.
Each team would play a home-and-home against their pod opponents while working with the Southeastern Conference to add a possible ninth game to keep the four in-state rivalries between Clemson-South Carolina, Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech and Louisville-Kentucky.
“If you have to play somebody twice, play ’em twice. … Just make it easy to play some games," Duke head football coach David Cutcliffe told Teel. "I think the public would enjoy that, just the uniqueness of a season that certainly we will all remember.”
According to Teel, charter flights for ACC football teams cost about $80,000 to $100,000 per game while bus trips cost about a fifth of those numbers which could save teams nearly $200,000 in travel this season.
Here's what Teel wrote:
With coronavirus cases spiking, a regular-season beyond 10 games appears to be a pipe dream. And that would hold true if the season were delayed until spring since staging two complete college football seasons in a calendar year would be logistically and morally — think player safety — untenable. Now pods and multiple games against an opponent aren’t the sole way to craft an abbreviated season. The ACC could retain its divisions, Coastal and Atlantic, and count only those six games in the league standings, creating more flexibility with the remainder of the schedule and still preserving the ACC-SEC dates.
Teel provided three possible options for what each pod could look like this season:
Option No. 1
Pod A: Miami, Florida State, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Duke.
Pod B: Virginia Tech, Virginia, Clemson, N.C. State, Wake Forest.
Pod C: Syracuse, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Notre Dame.
Option No. 2
Pod A: Miami, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Virginia Tech.
Pod B: North Carolina, N.C. State, Duke, Wake Forest, Virginia.
Pod C: Syracuse, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Notre Dame.
Option No. 3
Pod A: Miami, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Louisville.
Pod B: North Carolina, N.C. State, Duke, Wake Forest, Virginia.
Pod C: Syracuse, Boston College, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech.
For Clemson, the first option would keep them out of the state of Florida, and force two trips to Virginia to play both the Cavaliers and the Hokies. The Tigers would also keep their "Textile Bowl" rival N.C. State.
The second and third option would have the Tigers traveling twice to the Sunshine State to face Florida State and Miami. They would also keep their cross-division rivalry with Georgia Tech, and depending on the options face either Virginia Tech or Louisville.
