ACC considering number of football scheduling options

The ACC did not come to a decision Friday on future scheduling structure between the option of playing a nine-game conference schedule or an eight-plus-two model.

The league has talked about the league having a nine-game conference schedule for football. The addition of one game to every team's existing eight-game conference schedule has been up for debate since May of 2014 and, with a great deal of concern around the switch, now-former Georgia Tech Athletic Director Mike Bobinski offered an alternative approach.

Bobinski suggested the 8+2 schedule. This requires every ACC team to play its regular eight conference games, but with the addition of two games from Power 5 conferences. As of 2017, the ACC will require every team to play at least one of these games.

The push for this movement is due to the creation of the ACC Network. The network will play host to 40 regular-season games every season. This shift would provide extra content, more exposure and higher traffic to the network. According to The Atlanta Journal Constitution, ACC Basketball has already increased its number of conference games from 18 to 20 to cope with the change. Bobinski said:

"I think we’ll get that decision here in the next couple of weeks because we need to. You can’t put your non-conference schedule on hold forever. You’ve got to be able to move it, so getting the resolution on that’s important.”

This kind of schedule would affect the majority of the ACC schools. Florida State, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Louisville already schedule one SEC game per year. Three of these teams have a second SEC team on their schedule for this season. The other 10 teams would have a more difficult time with this change; North Carolina State has not played a Power 5 non-ACC team since 2012.

Another problem facing this change is the other conferences’ schedules. The Big 10, Big 12 and Pac-12 all play nine conference games per year. This could be changed when the Big 12 rearranges the conferences due to talks about acquiring new schools but, for now, it would be hard for 10 teams to schedule two Power 5 games when all of these teams have only three slots available.

An alternative option to playing other conferences would be to schedule extra ACC games and have them count as non-conference games. Wake Forest and North Carolina, for example, have already agreed to play a home-and-home series in 2019 and 2021.

This change requires a majority vote and could come in the following weeks.

Jimbo Fisher went on a bit of a rant Thursday and is opposed to the nine-game conference schedule.