ACC athletic directors vote to keep conference schedule at 8 games

The ACC will not be adding an extra conference game to its football teams’ schedules. The conference said Wednesday that its member schools’ athletic directors had voted to keep playing eight conference games.

#BREAKING: #ACC ADs vote to continue playing an eight-game league schedule with at least one Power Five nonconference game. #ACCFootball pic.twitter.com/XAU2d7EIP4

— ACC Football (@theACCfootball) October 5, 2016

Nine-game conference schedules have been considered a possibility for the ACC for quite some time. The idea got even more traction when the conference announced over the summer that it was forming the ACC Network with ESPN. The channel, set to launch by August of 2019, would need programming and an extra game was thought to be a logical way to create that programming.

The Power Five requirement is also not new. North Carolina and Wake Forest, teams in opposite divisions in the ACC, announced in January 2015 that the schools would play each other in 2019 and 2021 as non-conference opponents. The games would fulfill the Power Five requirement and essentially be a ninth conference game, though they won’t count against the standings.

The conference has an alignment with Notre Dame for five ACC games vs. the Irish each season. Those five teams that have Notre Dame on the schedule each year wouldn’t have to find an additional Power Five opponent.

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The Big Ten began a nine-game conference schedule this year. Both the Big Ten and Pac-12 are playing nine-game schedules with a conference title game while the Big 12 currently has a nine-game conference schedule and no title game. The Big 12 is adding a conference title game in 2017 despite the fact that every team in the conference already plays each other.

The SEC is the only other Power Five conference that has an eight-game conference schedule.

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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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