ACC football: Is removing divisions a good move?

ACC football has recently announced its intention to remove divisional ties for coming seasons. Is doing so a wise move to make?

Tuesday, the ACC officially announced its plans to remove the current divisional format that it has held for years.

The change is supposed to be enforced in 2023, with the conference wanting to get going as soon as possible with a design that it firmly believes is in everyone’s best interest.

Getting a closer look at what said design entails, it basically gives each ACC power three “primary opponents” that will be faced on an annual basis. As for the league’s other 10 teams, they will alternate, with five on the schedule for one year while the other five are on the schedule for the next.

This decision has come as rather upsetting news in the eyes of many ACC football fans, most namely because they see their beloved team’s rivalries taking a hit for no good reason. However, that isn’t quite the case.

Some of the in-conference rivalries will still be played annually due to members’ aforementioned primary opponents. Said rivalries include but are not limited to Florida State-Clemson, Florida State-Miami, Wake Forest-Duke, and North Carolina-NC State.

But even if some other rivalry games are no longer yearly affairs (which, from a fan’s perspective, is annoying), it will at least be seen every other year with this model.

Speaking of which, that is perhaps one of the new format’s best qualities: it gives teams a chance to regularly face the rest of their league.

The ACC’s current scheduling scheme is terrible

Let’s use Miami as an example. The Hurricanes typically have to face all six of their divisional opponents every single year, leaving only two slots in their eight-game conference slate to play teams from the other side. Of those two slots, one is always taken up by Florida State, as it is a league rule for them to play every season.

In other words, with today’s format, teams like Miami will only have a 1-in-6 chance to face any other power from the league’s opposing half (for reference, the Canes haven’t played Wake Forest since 2013). Regardless of whether or not you like this new idea, it cannot be denied that there is no reason for that level of stiffness to hinder the scheduling process.

Lastly, it should be acknowledged that the ACC isn’t introducing this idea solely for the sake of mixing things up. One of its biggest selling points when announcing this change was that it would involve selecting the two teams for its conference championship based on winning percentage within league play. That is an absolutely fair move, and here’s why.

Looking at all that Atlantic Coast football had to offer in 2021, its best team — Pittsburgh — hails from the Coastal division. Everything else that was remotely decent, though, resided on the Atlantic side (such as Wake Forest, NC State, and Clemson). This shows the league as being horribly unbalanced.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, either, as the Panthers winning the ACC last year made them the first Coastal team to do so since Virginia Tech took the cake in 2010. Not only that, but many of the conference title games that the Atlantic division has taken in recent memory have been total blowouts.

With the new style, fans are promised the two best teams in every title game, which is bound to be more entertaining than a playoff power pummeling a “meh” team that shimmied through a slate that was noticeably more mediocre.

People naturally despise change, so it makes sense for folks to welcome this upcoming format with skepticism. However, the list of negative impacts is rather short, especially from an objective standpoint. With that said, I would not expect this change to go anywhere anytime soon — nor should it.