Could ACC football alignment be in the works? For those who don't know, divisions are presently aligned as follows:
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ACC Atlantic:
Boston College
Clemson
Florida State
Maryland
NC State
Wake Forest
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ACC Coastal:
Duke
Georgia Tech
North Carolina
Miami
Virginia
Virginia Tech
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Presently, every season, each team plays each of their five intra-division teams once, plays one inter-division "traditional rival" (e.g. Maryland/Virginia ... FSU/Miami), and then the remaining two conference games are random inter-division games (e.g. Maryland/Virginia Tech).
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According to a very brief article appearing last month in The Orlando Sentinel, the head of the Florida State Seminoles booster club wrote to their athletic director urging him to lobby for realignment of the ACC Divisions in football. Now, to me, it seems that FSU has a lot more to worry about other than realignment. Like not forfeiting seasons' worth of victories. And the ACC made it be known that they can not realign until 2015 at the earliest, as football schedules are apparently set through that year.
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Here's the proposal from Florida State (and how it is of imminent interest to us here at ECB): Maryland be swapped with Georgia Tech - Maryland would move to the ACC Coastal Division and Georgia Tech would move to the ACC Atlantic Division.
You can never go wrong with a picture of J-Red's favorite Duke football player - Dan Erdeljac. Not an easy picture to find.
So how does this Terp fan feel about it? Well, about the only bad part of this is that I'd be sad to see Clemson off our calendar every year, I'd actually be all in favor of this move. The Terps will soon be playing West Virginia every season once again. Thus, if the Terps were in the Coastal Division, every season we would play all our border war games (Virginia, Virginia Tech, WVU). We'd draw UNC every year who is a traditional rival from the very beginnings of the ACC and who arouses much more of a sense of rivalry from Terp fans than Wake Forest. Our new "traditional rival" who we would play every year would likely become Georgia Tech, which isn't that great. We'd play Miami every year in football which I feel like before not too long is going to be a huge test again, and which gives the alumni the opportunity every two years to hit South Florida for a road game. And, of course, we'd get Duke on the schedule every year... easier than a 1-AA game.
Here's what it boils down to - I'd prefer to play Miami every year over FSU. I'd certainly prefer to play Virginia Tech every year over Boston College. I'd prefer to play UNC every year over NC State. I'd prefer Duke every year over Wake Forest because of the easy win aspect. Georgia Tech over Clemson every year is the drawback.
So we're still only about six years off. But hey, Seminoles, you want an ally in this? I think most Terp fans would be on board.
13 Responses:
Can't argue with your logic. Let's see what happens.
Currently, GT's rival is Clemson. Maybe the Terps could get a full switch with GT and as a result keep Clemson on the schedule full-time instead of UNC.
Russell - I hadn't thought about that. I had assumed that Georgia Tech and Maryland would become inter-division rivals. However, if that switch occurs, Clemson and Georgia Tech would need to be paired up with Maryland and UVA. I would LOVE for Maryland to keep the game with Clemson every year, as the possibility would exist. Although that could turn into a BRUTAL schedule... WVU, Clemson, VA Tech, and Miami every season. Ouch.
Not sure why you all are leaving out Georgia Tech like we're some push over. We beat Clemson 3 times in the past five years, including last year. Maryland is a joke. You'd wouldn't have a snowball's chance of beating GT, especially in the upcoming years. And if you'd listen to the experts and polls, which obviously you don't, you'd see that Tech is highly favored to win the ACC this year and the only team with a legitimate Nationla Championship shot.
Plus who would want the sorry Terps as a "rival" anyway. Might as well play Duke.
Why would someone from FSU want MD and GT to switch? I don't see the point
I'd rather see Boston College play Virginia every year instead of the Terps so that we can go to a civilized place like Charlottesville and avoid the rude, obnoxious fans in College Park.
Although we have only been to College Park a few times so far, I've seen Maryland fans go up to a little girl whose dad was wearing a BC shirt and drunkenly point at him and yell "your daddy's a loser" and on another occasion the team chaplain got pelted from the stands with hot dogs.
Nice group of fans in College Park, let me tell you.
Oddly, when Maryland has road-tripped to Chestnut Hill the fans are friendly and polite. I am guessing the road-trippers are actually alumni and the stands in College Park are filled with a good deal of local Maryland flavor.
"Nice group of fans in College Park, let me tell you." Asshole fans are everywhere. Surprise Anon 4, small world. Could be worse though, you could be Anon 1 and smack talking before the season starts. My $60 Peach Bowl tickets serve as a reminder if Chan wasn't enough of one.
Back on topic, I'm not really sure why there's the disgust at playing GT every year. I suppose it's short history in the series (19 games) while in comparison there's much more exciting history in the Clemson series (55 games). (Detailed stats at http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/)
I actually like the idea simply because I hate playing Clemson every year even though we're ahead by a large margin in the 71 game series. And it's actually 4 of 5 Anon 1 but so much for counting.
My grievances with the original setup was the placement of state rivals in the same division (UVA/VT and dook/UNC) and then the creation of "rivals" cross divisions.
How I would try it? Swap out UNC, UVA, and Miami for Wake, Clemson, and FSU. Cross rivalries are as follows:
UNC-dook, UVA-VT, Terps-Clemson, Miami-FSU, NC State-Wake, BC-GT.
I think it tries to appease the historic rivalries as best it can. And the two other games can be mixed up well enough hopefully. Still doesn't beat the 9 team conference but we're already past that point.
im thinking clemson's actual rival is south carolina as it has been for many years haha.
As a GT fan, I would be greatly in favor of this switch, especially if it occurred in a process meant to provide a North/South alignment to the conference as a whole.
What a joke. I'm not an ACC fan...but Maryland is above and beyond Georgia Tech? Are you kidding me? Since when? Georgia Tech is a football school, with a football coach that is going to lay some wood on these basketball schools. Maryland, is a joke..and better hope to be paired with Duke.
the biggest reason for this change request is financial. It limits fsu's travel quite a bit since GT is the closest geographic team to them and they don't exactly have a major airport in tallahassee. It also makes sense since it creates a border rivalry (and as pointed out in the article, border rivalries between MD and VA schools get back on the sched) which although GT didn't beat fsu till last year was pretty heated with some good close games before expansion.
anon at 11:02, Charlottesville is hardly civilized. I went to a terps wahoos football game down in C'ville. UMD lost badly and as I was leaving I said to some UVA fans behind me, "we'll see you during basketball season." He responded, "We don't care about that (racial slur) ball."
real civilized. There are a'holes everywhere.
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