ACC is ‘closer to the end’ in conversations to do away with league’s divisions

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Whether it becomes official here this week during the ACC’s annual spring meetings or sometime in the not-so-distant future, the conference appears likely, sooner rather than later, to adopt a new football scheduling model that would abandon the Atlantic and Coastal Divisions.

With the exception of the pandemic-altered 2020 season, the ACC has used a divisional model in football since 2005, when the conference grew to include 12 schools. Now, though, amid an urgency to enhance its football product and maximize its ability to generate revenue, the league appears on the verge of going to a division-less model, which would allow most schools to play each other more often than they do now.

"We’re closer to the end than to the beginning,” Dan Radakovich, the Miami athletic director, said here on Tuesday, when asked about the possibility of the ACC adopting a new scheduling model. Radakovich added that there’s strong momentum behind a model that would leave each of the ACC’s 14 full-time members with three permanent football opponents, and a two-year rotation with the other 10 schools in the league.

In that scenario, teams would play the same three opponents every season, in addition to a group of five teams in even years and the other five remaining teams in odd years. It would take two seasons, and not the current six, or more, for every ACC team to play every other team in the conference.

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