ACC Late Night | Teams put at disadvantage by odd start times for cross-country games

Boston College kicks off its 2025 ACC Football schedule at Stanford Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. local time, which translates to 10:30 p.m. body time for the BC kids.

I didn’t see anything from the weekly press conference with Bill O’Brien, the BC coach, even being asked about the late start time, and how it’s affecting his team’s preparation – whether or not he is adjusting his practice schedule to get his guys acclimated to needing to be alert later, that kind of thing.

That’s almost certainly the case, though. The game will stretch well into the 1 a.m. Sunday hour in terms of East Coast body time.

O’Brien, and any coach in his situation, needs to take into account the late start time as part of his game prep.

Noticing this on the schedule got me to do a review of start times for ACC games involving Stanford and Cal since they joined the league last year, both in football and men’s basketball, to get a gauge on how many games on the West Coast get the late start times, and if there have been any super early East Coast starts when the Cali teams have to venture across the continent in the other direction.

What I came up with:

• 10 p.m. ET or later starts for the East Coast teams in the 2024 ACC Football season: one (Miami at Cal, 10:30 p.m. ET start, Oct. 5)
• Noon ET starts for the West Coast teams in the 2024 ACC Football season: one (Stanford at NC State, noon ET start, Nov. 2)
• 10 p.m. ET or later starts for the East Coast teams in the 2025 ACC Football season: three (BC at Stanford, Sept. 13; UNC at Cal, Oct. 17; FSU at Stanford, Oct. 18). Note: the bulk of games after this weekend are still kickoff time TBA.
• 10 p.m. ET or later starts for the East Coast teams in the 2024-2025 ACC Basketball season: eight (Stanford had three, Cal have five).
• Noon or 2 p.m. ET starts for the West Coast teams in the 2024-2025 ACC Basketball season: two (both involving Stanford).

It would seem, if we’re going to maintain the pretense that these are college athletics events, and the kids involved are supposed to be expected to compete as student-athletes, then we wouldn’t have East Coast teams playing into the wee hours ET, weekend night or not, just because of the impact on the week leading into a cross-country game and the week coming out; and, ditto, for having West Coast teams playing early in their normal body-clock schedule.

The two ACC Football games involving West Coast teams with weird start times ended up with probably obvious results, considering – Cal, which finished 6-7 overall, and 2-6 in the ACC, led then-#8 Miami, which finished with a 10-3 record, 6-2 in ACC play, 35-10 midway through the third quarter, before the ‘Canes rallied for a 39-38 win; Stanford, 3-9 overall, 2-6 in the ACC, lost 59-28 to an equally underwhelming NC State team (6-7, 3-5 ACC).

I get that the TV folks push in particular for the late start times for football and basketball because that gives them another broadcast window.

Too bad.

The focus should be as much as possible on leveling the playing field for all involved.

At least until we end this nonsense experiment, of having an ACC that stretches from sea to shining sea.