Orange Watch: Syracuse QB Rickie Collins to attend 2025 ACC Football Kickoff

With the announcement from the ACC Thursday, naming the 68 players who will join the league’s 17 head coaches to take part in the three-day event July 22-24 at the Hilton Uptown Charlotte, the Syracuse quartet of Collins, safety Duce Chestnut, linebacker Derek McDonald, and D-lineman Dion “Tank” Wilson Jr. will not only be answering all the program-related questions (the beautiful, new Football Performance Center at the Lally Complex) about what is next for the ‘Cuse after finishing 10-3.

There is also a potential developing storyline.

Is Fran Brown sending a message?

Collins presence means that either Brown is reenforcing his proclamation made April 7 that the LSU transfer is the starter for the opener against Tennessee August 30, and/or he wants Collins to face the tough questions about his expected preseason battle with Notre Dame transfer Steve Angeli to see who steps foot on the Mercedes-Benz Stadium field first to face the Vols in Atlanta.

Either way, we applaud this move by Brown for a quarterback in Collins, who has played just one game (Arkansas) against a Power Four conference foe, facing a different kind of blitz from the media for several hours. No doubt Collins will be asked repeatedly about competing against Angeli, who played significant minutes in a victorious College Football Playoff semifinal game this past January against Penn State.

The trio of Orange defenders on hand will likely talk about depth. The need to continue to develop the second and third team players on that unit to sustain injuries that have plagued SU on that side of the ball for the last five seasons. Injuries that hope to decrease with the benefits of the state-of-the-art facilities in the new Performance Center.

The ACC is billing this year’s festivities as “bigger and better than ever.”

The in-house ACC Network will provide live coverage from Charlotte starting each “Kickoff” day at 9:00 a.m. and going practically all day.

Among other highlights on the agenda are Commissioner Jim Phillips’ annual state-of-the-conference address that takes play the first day (July 22), and a likely media frenzy surrounding new North Carolinas coach Bill Belichick on the Tar Heels scheduled day (July 24).

The buildup precludes a busy opening five days of Week 1 of the regular season for ACC teams over Labor Day weekend with some pretty good matchups besides SU-Tennessee including Alabama at Florida State, LSU at Clemson, Notre Dame at Miami, and TCU at North Carolina in Belichick’s college football head coaching debut.

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