A lot happened Thursday in the world of college football and it happened fast.
As one source told The Clemson Insider, there are a lot of moving parts going on right now. What are those moving parts?
As you know, the Big Ten announced Thursday it will go to conference-only seasons for all sports this fall. This of course has set the wheels in motion for what will be a different looking college football season in 2020.
The Big Ten is the first of the Power 5 conferences to announce this kind of news, while the ACC said earlier in the day it will delay the start of fall competition until Sept. 1. Sources told TCI the ACC will likely move to a conference-season only format as well.
How many games will the ACC play?
TCI has confirmed the league will allow Notre Dame to continue to play its member institutions considering the relationship between the ACC and Notre Dame. The Irish were already scheduled to play six games against ACC foes this season. We have been told Notre Dame will now play a full ACC schedule like the rest of the conference for this season only.
As we reported earlier, Notre Dame is working on a 10-game schedule, similar to the reports that are coming out of the Big Ten as well. We have been told the ACC will likely play 10 games, too.
We know Notre Dame will definitely be Clemson’s ninth opponent since they had a game already schedule for Nov. 7 in South Bend, Ind. But at this time, we do not know who would be the 10th team on the Tigers’ 2020 schedule.
Sources have told us the ACC and its members have already been working on a schedule for this scenario. We understand they will try to keep as many of the games as currently scheduled. There will however be some changes to everyone’s schedules as they replace the non-conference games and fit Notre Dame into a full ACC schedule.
For instance, we can assume, whoever fills out Clemson’s schedule as the 10th opponent, if the ACC goes this direction, that game is likely to be played at Death Valley. It will give Clemson five home games and five road games in this scenario.
If they do indeed keep the Clemson-Notre Dame game on Nov. 7 that would be Week 10 of the schedule. We could certainly see two top 10 undefeated teams battling in South Bend.
Could we see a rematch the following week in Charlotte for the ACC Championship? The ACC, Notre Dame, NBC and ESPN could all benefit from this scenario. Some of these answers are yet to come, but it sure is intriguing to think about.
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