Also under review will be the possibility of going to a nine-game league format for the 12 ACC teams in football.
Under the current system, ACC teams play eight conference games. Each school in the two six-team divisions -- Atlantic and Coastal -- play the other five division members plus three from the opposite division.
Should a nine-game format be adopted, each team would play four games against teams from the opposite division.
"It's something that I think we should talk about and explore," Wake Forest athletic director Ron Wellman said Thursday. "There are some obvious pros and cons, and it's certainly not beyond the exploratory stage for now. But with the 12-game regular-season policy, there is some additional room for flexible in-conference scheduling."
A drawback, Wellman quickly acknowledged, would be the fact that teams would have five league games on the road and only four at home in certain seasons. On the plus side, Wellman said, most fans would prefer to see games against league rivals over most nonconference foes.
"I tend to favor this idea, but I'm not wedded to it by any means," he said. "There's a lot of information we need to gather from several parties, including the conference coaches, of course."
Of course Wake Forest supports it. I'd be willing to bet that the rest of the little 4 support it as well. They only care about football when it's them playing one of the other football schools. Nevermind the fact that this is going to hurt schools who draw more than flies at their home games regardless of opponent. It's really going to hurt Clemson, FSU, and Georgia Tech because we have 5 automatic away games every two years as it is with our season ending rivalries with in-state SEC schools. Now we are supposed to give up a home game every year just so four schools who have never given a rip about football can play with each other more often. This pretty much means the end of games like Clemson/Texas A&M, Georgia Tech/Notre Dame, and FSU/Colorado because we are going to have to play buy games to make up for the lost revenue. Is the ACC going to supplement the revenue Clemson loses the years it has to host Duke and their three football fans since we will be playing them more often?
If it's that big of a hardship for the NC schools not to play each other every year then use one of your four OOC games to play the school that has rotated off the schedule. Don't penalize the schools who have fan bases who care about their team, not fans who only care when it's one of the Tabakky Road schools.
Yet another extremely stupid idea brought forth by a clueless ACC administration. It's high time we get Tarheel Johnny Swofford and his basketball mindset out of the office and get someone who will look out for the ENTIRE conferences and not just the four located in North Carolina.
