thoughts?
Practically every participant at the meetings expressed a desire for a change to the current football rotation, which sees several teams squaring off only once every six years. But the group was no closer to a solution when the meetings adjourned than when they began four days earlier.
"In the end, everybody may have to give up something," FSU athletics director Stan Wilcox told Warchant. "And we're trying to minimize what has to be given up. There are a couple options that we've looked at, and we've asked them to give us more options. So the conference is going to go back and work on different options."
Several ACC administrators and football coaches have voiced disappointment that their players will not get the opportunity to face every school in the conference before graduating.
"I would love for a guy to come to Clemson and be able to play everybody in the league at least once during his career," Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said.
Unless compromise is reached on one of three fronts, however, a solution could be difficult to come by. Either some traditional rivals will have to accept not facing each other every year, the conference will have to shuffle its divisions, or the league must move to a nine-game ACC schedule.
In a tight vote at last year's meetings, the conference decided to stick with an eight-game ACC slate. The nine-game option, which would ensure that schools face every conference opponent within a three-year span but would also limit the options for high-profile non-conference games, was not discussed this year. But Swofford said it could be revisited.
"I don't think that's gone away as a possibility," he said.
One option with an eight-game schedule, Swofford said, would be to shuffle schools so that traditional rivals would be placed in the same divisions. That would mean moving Florida State, N.C. State and Clemson to the Coastal Division, or sending Miami, North Carolina and Georgia Tech to the Atlantic.
Of course, a move like that would bring about a different set of issues, such as competitive balance between the two divisions.
"When those rivalry games are within a division, that's easy," Swofford said. "When they're not, that's when you get into probably complicating the schedule some. So we'll continue to look at that and see if there are better ways to reach that common thread of playing each other as frequently as we can, because that's part of being a conference."
https://floridastate.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1767028
Practically every participant at the meetings expressed a desire for a change to the current football rotation, which sees several teams squaring off only once every six years. But the group was no closer to a solution when the meetings adjourned than when they began four days earlier.
"In the end, everybody may have to give up something," FSU athletics director Stan Wilcox told Warchant. "And we're trying to minimize what has to be given up. There are a couple options that we've looked at, and we've asked them to give us more options. So the conference is going to go back and work on different options."
Several ACC administrators and football coaches have voiced disappointment that their players will not get the opportunity to face every school in the conference before graduating.
"I would love for a guy to come to Clemson and be able to play everybody in the league at least once during his career," Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said.
Unless compromise is reached on one of three fronts, however, a solution could be difficult to come by. Either some traditional rivals will have to accept not facing each other every year, the conference will have to shuffle its divisions, or the league must move to a nine-game ACC schedule.
In a tight vote at last year's meetings, the conference decided to stick with an eight-game ACC slate. The nine-game option, which would ensure that schools face every conference opponent within a three-year span but would also limit the options for high-profile non-conference games, was not discussed this year. But Swofford said it could be revisited.
"I don't think that's gone away as a possibility," he said.
One option with an eight-game schedule, Swofford said, would be to shuffle schools so that traditional rivals would be placed in the same divisions. That would mean moving Florida State, N.C. State and Clemson to the Coastal Division, or sending Miami, North Carolina and Georgia Tech to the Atlantic.
Of course, a move like that would bring about a different set of issues, such as competitive balance between the two divisions.
"When those rivalry games are within a division, that's easy," Swofford said. "When they're not, that's when you get into probably complicating the schedule some. So we'll continue to look at that and see if there are better ways to reach that common thread of playing each other as frequently as we can, because that's part of being a conference."
https://floridastate.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1767028
