Syracuse to the ACC... soon!

In 11.5 months...

In 50 weeks...

In 350 days...

Syracuse will - officially - join the Atlantic Coast Conference.

From ESPN: Syracuse to bolt for ACC next July.

This means a similar timeframe will likely be in place for Pittsburgh, once they wade through their ongoing litigation with the Big East.

The Cuse is joining the Atlantic Division, with FSU, Clemson, NC State, Maryland, Wake, and BC.  Pitt is joining us, along with VT, UNC, Duke, Miami, and GT in the Coastal.

This impacts Virginia because it means we're picking up a game against the Panthers in 2013 (and every season thereafter), and the inter-division conference scheduling rhythm is disturbed.


This was our conference schedule prior to the addition of the two new schools:

2013 -- Home: Clemson, GT, Duke, VT; Away: Maryland, Wake, UNC, Miami
2014 -- Home: Maryland, BC, UNC, Miami; Away: Clemson, GT, Duke, VT
2015 -- Home: FSU, GT, Duke, VT; Away: Maryland, BC, UNC, Miami


Go ahead and erase all of that, or at least the games against the Atlantic division teams that I noted in bold.  We were scheduled to have Wake Forest on the schedule in 2013, Clemson in 2013 and 2014, Boston College in 2014 and 2015, and Florida State in 2015.  Now, who knows?  Syracuse has to have a spot in that inter-division rotation.  With the ACC expanding its regular season to nine conference games instead of eight, there will still be two spots for that rotation, after the six intra-division games (for us, VT, UNC, Duke, GT, Miami, Pitt) and the inter-division rivalry game (Maryland).  So we'll play two of Syracuse, Florida State, Wake Forest, NC State, Clemson, and Boston College every season, on some sort of rotation.


ACC Scheduling Gods, hear me!  Keep FSU and Clemson the hell away from us in 2013.  That's our best chance for a real breakthrough (read: 10+ win) campaign, and it'd help if we got relative cupcakes in Wake, Syracuse, or BC, as opposed to the Seminoles and/or Tigers.  Swap Clemson out for Syracuse in our originally-planned 2013 schedule, and I promise I'll go to church more often.

(Note: We're already scheduled to play @ Penn State, vs. Ball State, vs. UTSA, and vs. VMI in 2013.  I'm guessing the VMI game drops off of that schedule to accomodate the nine-game ACC slate.)