ACC athletic director has wild response to 9-game schedule problem
By Sydney Hunte
Published:
The ACC is expected to follow the SEC lead and move to a 9-game conference schedule.
But how will that work with 17 teams? One AD from the conference went on the record with On3’s Brett McMurphy.
“We have the highest-rated academic schools of any Power Four conference. We’ll figure it out,” the AD said.
The unnamed AD isn’t wrong about the ACC’s academic standing. Five schools — North Carolina, Clemson, Wake Forest, Florida State, and Duke — were in the top 20 nationally in APR. Looking at wins, though, those five teams finished with 31. Clemson (10) and Duke (9) accounted for 19 of them.
There’s nothing wrong with good performances in the classroom. But boasting about it in the context of scheduling football games every year probably isn’t the own that the ACC thinks it is.
The number that will jump out to most is revenue. The SEC, for example, doled out $52.6 million per school after the previous academic year. The ACC dished out $45 million per school.
By the way, the ACC has just 2 championships in the College Football Playoff, too. The SEC has 6. Perhaps the academic minds in the ACC can figure out how to close that gap.
Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men's national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.
