ND moving to ACC effective July 1st

[IrishLax]

Move has been confirmed to be in all sports sans hockey (headed to Hockey East) and football (independent). Football will start playing 5 ACC opponents in 2014.

Which means that the current tentative football schedule for 2014 will change. Right now there are only 11 games scheduled but only 2 of them (Syracuse, Pitt) are ACC games. BC/Wake Forest are absent from the schedule and either could be a good 12th game, but we'll still need to swap out two games for 2 ACC games.

Key options look like:
1. Cancelling the Michigan series a year early.
2. Cancelling Arizona State game (we only play neutral site @ Cowboys stadium this year and 2014 is supposed to be an away game).
3. Swapping out the Rice game to start the year (not ideal to remove "tune up" game).
4. Swapping out the road game against Temple in the middle of the year (would be financially tough cancelling the return leg of the home-and-home).
5. Cancelling Northwestern game (series? Might actually be easiest if this is a singular game).

Other interesting point of note... Michigan State is currently not on the schedule for 2014 or forward. I was under the impression that they were. Is this a misprint?

 

[Pops Freshenmeyer]

There is a spot remaining in the 2015 schedule for a non-ACC team so one could be bumped back a year. I would guess that Northwestern gets cut outright since the B1G is going to have scheduling issues for its members. They may be the most amenable to simply dropping it.

 

[Pops Freshenmeyer]

Another interesting issue with the move to the ACC is going to be the distribution of home games. If ND keeps Purdue, Navy, USC and Stanford as annual rivalry games (each being even home & home format) then in years where ND has three of the five ACC games on the road they will have to make the remaining three opponents into home games to keep the number at seven. That might prove difficult even when converting one home game to a neutral site.

 

[IrishLax]

Another interesting issue with the move to the ACC is going to be the distribution of home games. If ND keeps Purdue, Navy, USC and Stanford as annual rivalry games (each being even home & home format) then in years where ND has three of the five ACC games on the road they will have to make the remaining three opponents into home games to keep the number at seven. That might prove difficult even when converting one home game to a neutral site.

Interesting. But probably not super difficult as long as our other agreements (i.e. Texas) are coordinated such that we get them as a home game in those 3-away years you're talking about.

We should be able to schedule teams like Rice, UMASS, Temple, etc. for singular home games to fill out the remainder of a home slate as necessary. And unlike programs like Michigan that are obsessed with playing 8 home games... ND has never struck me as one of those teams that really cares that much about playing an even slate if necessary.

 

[STLDomer]

“@McMurphyESPN: Big East's @NickCarparelli says Notre Dame not part of Big East lineup in 2013 so if ND isn't in BCS bowl will have to find an open bowl”

Is this a big deal? Wouldn't any bowl take us has a at large instantly over most other teams?

 

[Irish YJ]

Regarding removing Rice as a tune-up.... there are several ACC teams that fit that bill. Might not be to the extent of Rice, but still. Duke, Wake, Viginia, Maryland, and now BC should be considered "easy". We may see some of those teams as competitive, but not hard if we consider ourselves elite. They wouldn't be to level of D2/SEC tune ups, but most don't want to see those anyway.

 

[irishff1014]

Regarding removing Rice as a tune-up.... there are several ACC teams that fit that bill. Might not be to the extent of Rice, but still. Duke, Wake, Viginia, Maryland, and now BC should be considered "easy". We may see some of those teams as competitive, but not hard if we consider ourselves elite. They wouldn't be to level of D2/SEC tune ups, but most don't want to see those anyway.

Maryland will been in the big10 then

 

[IrishLax]

“@McMurphyESPN: Big East's @NickCarparelli says Notre Dame not part of Big East lineup in 2013 so if ND isn't in BCS bowl will have to find an open bowl”

Is this a big deal? Wouldn't any bowl take us has a at large instantly over most other teams?

This is pretty darn irrelevant... especially because if we're joined to the ACC in July then we *should* be able to use our bowl agreement with them to find a landing spot in a lower bowl if necessary.

 

[Cackalacky]

I cant wait to be able to drive to Clemson, WF, GT, Duke, UNC, NCST etc.. to see the Irish play a couple times a year.

 

[WakeUpEchoes]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Talked to <a href="https://twitter.com/search/%23NotreDame">#NotreDame</a> AD Jack Swarbrick. One point: Between ACC & football skeds, ND will hit 11 of 12 biggest US markets next couple years.</p>— Brian Hamilton (@ChiTribHamilton) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChiTribHamilton/status/311536601291423745">March 12, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[arrowryan]

I would like to see a night game in South Bend against Clemson

 

[MPClinton22]

I would like to see a night game in South Bend against Clemson

Agreed. With a Clemson alum in my family I hope that can become a nice rivalry. And the games at Clemson will make for some unbelievable weekends. Clemson definitely knows how to do gamedays.

 

[Cali_domer]

Remainder of Notre Dame-ACC scheduling being finalized+

The ACC and Notre Dame are expected to finalize details for the remainder of their 60-game contract soon. ACC senior associate commissioner Michael Strickland said the conference will likely have dates and sites for the fourth, fifth and six years of the deal and years and sites for the back half of the contract. Under the agreement, which begins this year, Notre Dame will play every ACC school four times, home and away, through 2025. The ACC-Notre Dame games have already been scheduled for 2014-2016.
An announcement could come in August.
“I don’t think we’ll have specific dates for some of those later years, but setting the rotation of them knowing, Hey, you play at (Notre Dame) or host in a certain year, that’s something that’s something that we’d like to get done probably really soon,” Strickland said.
Tech’s first game against Notre Dame will be at South Bend, Ind., Sept. 19, 2015.

Some other details on how the sausage gets made, so to speak:

1. Every team will play Notre Dame four times and four teams will play the Irish a fifth time. The schedule is for 60 games over 12 years.

2. It largely won’t be a model where any team will play Notre Dame every three years, as there’s too many moving parts for that to happen.

3. Among the litany of factors that Strickland and his counterparts at Notre Dame (athletic director Jack Swarbrick, senior associate AD John Heisler and associate AD Chad Klunder) are having to take into consideration:

- Notre Dame’s contracted games with Stanford and USC, which means also dealing with the Pac-12’s scheduling model, and Navy.

- Schedule balance for Notre Dame. As Strickland put it, “You wouldn’t want, nor would they ever agree to it, where they have to play Southern Cal, Florida State, Clemson and Miami four in a row.”

- The four built-in rivalry games for Tech, Clemson, Florida State and Louisville, as those teams’ preference, Strickland said, would be to avoid playing their rivalry game and the Notre Dame both on the road in the same year.

- This is my favorite – NBC’s fall sports lineup. When NBC carries events like the Ryder Cup and the Breeders’ Cup on autumn Saturdays, Notre Dame can’t play at home, as the network is contracted to carry all Notre Dame home games.

- The schedules for all 14 ACC teams. It can be presumed, for instance, that Tech would prefer to not play Notre Dame the week before it plays Georgia.

Said Strickland, “So you’ve got to pass the smell test on paper for everybody. It’s more art than science, for sure. It’s not very complicated, in terms of the technology used.”

Strickland keeps his information on computer files and the like. “Nothing extravagant,” he said.

My guess would be that after Tech plays at Notre Dame in 2015, the return game would probably be in an even year when the Jackets are at Georgia, so maybe 2018, since 2016 is already scheduled, and perhaps as the second or third game of the season.

Remainder of Notre Dame-ACC scheduling being finalized | Georgia Tech Sports blog