ACC Football Could Potentially Switch to a Nine-Game Conference Schedule

In an effort to expand media attention and broaden reach, the ACC could adopt a nine-game conference schedule for football in the near future, David Teel of the "Daily Press" states.

They first explored the idea back in 2012, with the ensuing additions of Syracuse and Pittsburgh put on the backburner eight months later. It was brought up again in the league's 2014 spring meetings, but the eight-game format won the vote 8-6. The decision was helped by the fact that Notre Dame agreed to play five ACC opponents per year as a non-football conference member. The other element was keeping in mind the rotations that Clemson, Florida State, Louisville, and Georgia had with their respective SEC rivals.

The model that was drawn up and scrapped: the Coastal Division would play five road games and four home games in odd years while the Atlantic division did the same in even years. This made it so that the teams playing their annual SEC games wouldn't be playing them on the road in the same season they had five road ACC games. It would also guarantee that each team would play conference foes in the opposite division once every three years, with the exception of the permanent inter-division games for Boston College, Virginia Tech, Louisville, and Virginia.

If the ACC really wishes to have its own proper TV channel at some point soon, Teel says the conference might take heed to revisiting the nine-game idea for the sake of grabbing more televised properties. The ACC (and ESPN) owns the rights to every ACC home game, which all of these in-conference games would obviously be (as opposed to potential road games vs. non-conference opponents).