ACC Football | ADs to meet next week in Charlotte to discuss future schedules

You might have read about the ACC setting a meeting for next week in Charlotte to discuss future football scheduling.

Buried in the stories on this: we’re not talking about anything changing anytime soon.

Looks like it would be 2027 at the earliest that the conference would either go with a nine-game conference schedule, mirroring the Big Ten and Big 12, which are already doing nine games, and the SEC, which is moving to a nine-game conference slate in 2026, or an 8+2 formula with eight conference games and two games against Power 4 programs.

Looking at the UVA Football schedule for 2026, the AD, Carla Williams, already has four nonconference games on the schedule – a pair of cupcakes in Norfolk State, an FCS school, and Delaware, a recent former FCS school now making the transition to FBS; along with West Virginia in a neutral-site game in Charlotte, and NC State, an ACC school that hasn’t been on UVA’s ACC schedule in forever and a day, so the two schools agreed to do a nonconference home-and-home.

It’s not looking likely that the schedule shift being discussed will take effect in 2026, but UVA and State could obviously just adjust their game to a conference game and move forward.

The schedules for the ‘Hoos in 2027, 2028 and 2029 each have just one nonconference opponent at this stage – William & Mary in 2027, Richmond in 2028 and Kansas in 2029.

According to CBS Sports, the league’s ADs are leaning toward a nine-game ACC schedule, with the ones on the fence being there because they want to be sure to have scheduling flexibility for games with traditional rivals – e.g. Georgia Tech-Georgia, Clemson-South Carolina, Florida State-Florida, Louisville-Kentucky, Pitt-West Virginia.

Seems simple enough – those folks build around a nine-game ACC schedule and a 10th game with their rivals, and then they find two cupcakes, and life goes on.

There’s a Notre Dame factor to think through as well – Notre Dame, an ACC member in everything else, is still fiercely (stubbornly) independent in football, but part of the school’s agreement with the conference is that it schedules five games a year with ACC schools.

We could just toss them to the wolves and let them figure out five more nonconference games for themselves – and wish them good luck doing so, with the entirety of the Power 4 going with the 9+1 model.

It would only be for a couple of years anyway – the next realignment is going to start taking shape in the spring and summer of 2027, with an eye on TV contracts starting to come back up for renegotiation in 2029 and 2030.