There is no incentive to. If you are Duke or UNC, you only care about basketball and you can sit at home during bowl season and get more money than FSU does from the ACC.
Where is the incentive to change?
Duke is spending $15 Million on their football stadium and trumpeting it as some big move to join big time football. Texas A&M is about to drop $450 Million on their already very nice stadium. The ACC is just not in the race here.
Unless the entire culture of the ACC changes overnight, it would take some major, outside the box conference change to see the ACC do anything except hope 2-3 teams carry the whole conference year after year.
By the numbers: Nonconference scheduling
"The biggest news to come from last week’s ACC league meetings was a decision on future conference scheduling. With expansion, there was a push to move to a nine-game conference slate, along with the potential to switch up the conference title game format. For now, however, things are going to stay more or less the same.
What has changed in terms of scheduling is a rule that will require all teams to play at least one nonconference game against a team from a Power 5 conference (Pac-12, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC). While that won’t affect the four ACC teams with annual rivalry games against the SEC (FSU, Clemson, Louisville and Georgia Tech), it will force some others to up the ante on future scheduling.
Rather than look ahead, however, we decided to take a look back at how the ACC has fared against Power 5 competition in recent years.
As colleague Andrea Adelson pointed out, the 2013 nonconference slate in the ACC was one of the toughest in the nation, and the 2014 schedule projects to be similarly daunting.
“The ACC played one of the most challenging nonconference schedules in the country a season ago, featuring games against Georgia, USC, Florida, Northwestern, Penn State, Alabama, South Carolina, BYU and Oregon.
This year, Oklahoma State, Georgia, Ohio State, Nebraska, UCLA, USC and Iowa are on the nonconference schedule, in addition to the standard SEC rivalry games for Florida State, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Louisville.”
But while the ACC played a fair number of tough nonconference games, it didn’t exactly perform particularly well in them.
In fact, going back five years to the 2009 season, the numbers are pretty bleak.
The 11 current ACC members who have been a part of the conference since 2009 have played a total of 73 regular-season, nonconference games against Power 5 teams. Their combined record is a dismal 22-51 (.301).
Here’s how bad it actually is:
• Three of those 22 wins actually came against Pitt, Syracuse and Louisville when those programs were not part of the ACC.
• Seven more wins came against Vandy, Kansas, Rutgers and Indiana — hardly traditional powers despite their conference affiliations.
• No ACC team has a winning record in nonconference, regular-season games against Power 5 teams during that span. The team that has performed the best during that stretch is North Carolina, which is 3-3.
ACC's NONCONFERENCE HISTORY
The number of games played by ACC teams against nonconference opponents in the regular season since 2009: | Team | No. of Games |
|---|---|
| Clemson | 10 |
| Wake Forest | 10 |
| Georgia Tech | 9 |
| Boston College | 8 |
| Florida State | 7 |
| Virginia | 7 |
| Miami | 6 |
| North Carolina | 6 |
| Duke | 4 |
| NC State | 3 |
| Virginia Tech | 3 |
The failures against Power 5 teams are league-wide, but the spread is a bit one-sided. Since 2009, there are a few teams that have distinctly avoiding playing nonconference, regular-season games against Power 5 teams. The full list is in a chart on the right.
What’s worse, four of those six games played by NC State and Virginia Tech came in 2009, meaning those two programs have each played just one regular-season, nonconference game against a Power 5 team in the last four years. (Virginia Tech played Alabama last season, while NC State played Tennessee in 2012.)
Of course, conference games are also played against Power 5 foes, and the ACC has won its share of bowl games against teams from major conferences as well. With that in mind, here are the league’s standings since 2009 based on all games against teams currently in a Power 5 conference (plus Notre Dame).
ACC VS. POWER 5 TEAMS
Every ACC team's record vs. Power 5 conference teams, plus Notre Dame, since 2009: | Team | Record | Winning Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Florida State | 39-15 | .722 |
| Virginia Tech | 34-16 | .680 |
| Clemson | 37-19 | .661 |
| Georgia Tech | 31-24 | .564 |
| Louisville | 15-13 | .536 |
| Miami | 25-24 | .510 |
| North Carolina | 24-25 | .490 |
| Pittsburgh | 17-20 | .459 |
| Syracuse | 16-23 | .410 |
| NC State | 18-28 | .391 |
| Boston College | 18-32 | .360 |
| Wake Forest | 16-35 | .314 |
| Duke | 14-36 | .304 |
| Virginia | 13-35 | .270 |
It’s probably no surprise that Florida State, Clemson and Virginia Tech -- the league’s power teams -- have performed the best.
Georgia Tech’s solid 31-24 record might be a nice feather in Paul Johnson’s cap, if not for the five straight losses to UGA.
Miami and North Carolina have played .500 football in big games the last five years, which puts them in the middle of the pack but, of course, is far below the expectations for two programs with the resources to perform much better.
The league’s newcomers -- Syracuse, Pitt and Louisville -- have won a few significant games, but the ACC obviously has higher hopes for all three schools moving forward.
(Note: Losing Maryland certainly isn't hurting the ACC with respect to these numbers. The Terps were a dismal 13-33 (.282) against all Power 5 teams in the last five years and just 1-5 in regular-season, nonconference games against Power 5 foes.)
Overall, however, the win-loss records don’t exactly tell the story of the ACC as a rising power in the national landscape. In fact, the new scheduling strategy is effectively a carbon copy of the one installed by the SEC, but the difference between the performance of the two leagues in those games is actually quite stark.
In the last five years, the 12 continuous SEC programs are 41-24 (.631) in nonconference, regular-season games against Power 5 opponents, winning at more than double the rate of the ACC. While the ACC doesn’t have a single team that has won more than half of its games against Power 5, nonconference teams in the regular season, the SEC has three teams (Alabama, LSU and South Carolina) that are undefeated in such games.
The knock on the SEC, of course, is that its programs have widely shied away from top-notch competition outside the league. While ACC teams have played, on average, 6.6 regular-season, nonconference games against Power 5 foes in the last five years, the SEC has averaged just 5.4.
But that doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things. Scheduling big-name opponents wasn’t really the problem in the first place. Winning more of those games is the big hurdle the conference needs to clear."
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