For Georgia Tech, the upshot of the ACC’s new scheduling formats for football and basketball is more league games and more trips to Pittsburgh.
At its annual winter meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the ACC finalized its alignments and scheduling plans for the league’s expansion to 14 teams when Pittsburgh and Syracuse join the conference. That date is uncertain, as Pittsburgh and Syracuse are contractually obligated to remain in the Big East into the 2013-14 academic year.
As expected, football will add a ninth conference game, and the league schedule for both men’s and women’s basketball will grow from 16 to 18. Pittsburgh will join Tech’s Coastal Division while Syracuse will go to the Atlantic.
“It adds another quality opponent, certainly, [and] a trip to a new city,” Tech associate athletic director Wayne Hogan said. “It’ll be good for our program.”
For football, each team will play its six division opponents, its primary crossover partner (in Tech’s case that is Clemson) and two teams in rotation from the opposite division. It’s expected that all teams in one division will play five home games one season and four the next.
The Coastal Division appears to be receiving the stronger football team in recent history. The Panthers have averaged 7.6 wins and made four bowl trips in the past five seasons, compared with 4.4 wins and one bowl for the Orange. Pitt is 9-1 against Syracuse in their past 10 games, although the Orange had won 11 in a row before that.
Since the ACC split into two divisions beginning with the 2005 season, the Atlantic is 69-64 against Coastal teams, including ACC championship games.
Pitt is recovering from colossal instability, however. Since the beginning of the 2010 season, the Panthers have had six head coaches or interims and are now under the direction of former Wisconsin offensive coordinator Paul Chryst.
Tech officials hope that the expansion will permit them to address having rivals Clemson, Virginia Tech and Georgia all at home in odd years and on the road in even years. The quirk has caused fluctuation in season ticket sales and revenues.
“If there’s a window of opportunity, I know that [athletic director Dan Radakovich] is going to want to jump on that,” Hogan said.
The nine-game schedule will reduce nonconference games to three, including Tech’s annual game with Georgia. Hogan said it’s likely the other two games would typically be against an FCS opponent and an FBS team from a non-BCS automatic-qualifier conference.
For basketball, each member will have one primary partner. Tech’s will be Clemson. The other 12 opponents will rotate in groups of four. Each season, a team will play home and away with one group, home against another group and away against the last group. Over a three-year cycle, primary partners will play each other six times and the other teams four times.
All 14 teams will compete in the men’s and women’s conference tournaments.
While the nine-game football schedule will go into effect only when Pitt and Syracuse join the league, the 18-game basketball schedule begins next season.
Going from 16 to 18 “doesn’t matter, because usually what would happen is, those two other games you’d play in the non-conference would be against BCS schools anyway,” Tech basketball coach Brian Gregory said. “I think everybody’s going to 18, plus TV-wise it’s much better for everybody.”
Other team sports will continue to play every other conference team at least once in the regular season except for baseball, whose format will continue to not include games between all ACC opponents.
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