The Atlantic Coast Conference's transition to a nine-game football schedule will feature 12 of 17 football-playing members playing nine games next fall while the remaining five stay at eight.
The league announced details of the new model Tuesday, including the league matchups for each school. Next year will operate as a bridge to accommodate conference games already on the books, with the plan to have 16 of 17 teams playing nine football games regularly by 2027.
Reigning champion Duke will join California, Louisville, Miami, N.C. State, Pittsburgh, SMU, Stanford, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest in playing nine league games for the 2026 season. That leaves Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech and North Carolina to play eight.
The league in September announced plans to have a nine-game slate, aligning with power-conference peers in the Big 12, Big Ten and Southeastern conferences. That came after debates and disagreement about the impact of unbalanced scheduling and access to the 12-team College Football Playoff.
The ACC is the only one of those leagues with an odd number of football members, creating a variable that will mean one team will play only eight games once the scheduling model is fully implemented in 2027.
The ACC's new schedule is designed to have teams play a total of 10 games against Power Four opponents as a baseline in a so-called 9+1 model. The rotating team playing an eight-game league slate would aim to play an 8+2 model to meet that 10-game target.
The question as to how an eight-game league record might compare with a nine-game record is unclear.
The ACC used winning percentage during the COVID-19 pandemic in multiple sports with teams playing unequal totals of games because of numerous cancellations, but Commissioner Jim Phillips said publicly last week that the league is examining its football tiebreaker process for the ACC championship game. ACC officials said Tuesday an updated tiebreaker policy will be announced sometime before the 2026 season.
The current policy came under scrutiny when five-loss Duke won a five-team tiebreaker — which included now-No. 10 and CFP-bound Miami — to reach the title game and ultimately beat No. 20 Virginia earlier this month for its first outright ACC title since 1962.
The ACC had used an eight-game football schedule since Florida State’s arrival for the 1992 season, the outlier being a 10-game schedule in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That included Notre Dame giving up its cherished independent status for one year and playing a full ACC schedule.
The Fighting Irish, a member of all other league sports, typically play four to six football games per year against ACC schools. Those games would fit into the nonconference column in the 9+1 or 8+2 scheduling models.
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