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The ACC can’t seem to get out of its way, even for the simplest decisions.
Like announcing its football schedule for the upcoming season.
For whatever reason, the league office decided to schedule the big reveal at the same time its most valuable basketball commodity, No. 2-ranked Duke, was playing Triangle rival NC State over on ESPN.
I get that the conference is excited about releasing the information to the public and creating some offseason buzz for football. And that it’s eager to drive traffic to its ACC Network. But whatever ratings bump it might have gotten from the schedule reveal was likely negated by the timing of the release.
Literally any other day or time would have worked better.
In the future, it might be a good idea for commissioner Jim Phillips or someone else in Charlotte to check the schedules of all the ACC’s major sports before making a major schedule announcement.
In case you missed it while watching the Blue Devils hold off the Wolfpack, here are some of the highlights of the 2025 ACC football schedule that was announced Monday:
Homebody Hoodie
Bill Belichick’s first season at North Carolina promises to become the same kind of circus Deion Sanders’ arrival at Colorado created 2 years ago. But if the national media is determined to shine its spotlight on the Tar Heels’ new coach, it’s going to have to come to him to do it.
That’s because his Tar Heels won’t be straying from their home base very often in 2025.
Nine of UNC’s 12 games will be played in the Old North State. That includes road games at Charlotte, Wake Forest and NC State. This is the second time in 3 seasons the Tar Heels have played 3 true road games in North Carolina. They also did it in 2022 at East Carolina, Wake and State.
While most of the Tar Heels’ trips will be by bus, they’ll have at least one opportunity to pick up some frequent flier miles when they travel to Cal for a weeknight game on Oct. 16 or 17. Their other 2 out-of-state road games will be at UCF on Sept. 20 and at Syracuse on Oct. 31.
The Cal and Syracuse games are weeknight affairs, as is UNC’s opener at home against TCU on Labor Day Monday. Although kickoff times for Saturday games won’t be announced until later, there’s a good chance that the Tar Heels will be playing a lot of prime-time games in order for their 6-time Super Bowl champion coach to get maximum exposure on ABC and ESPN.
Clemson’s path back to the Playoff
The Tigers snuck into last season’s 12-team field through the back door. But with the return of Cade Klubnik, his top receivers, TJ Parker and Sammy Brown – among others – and coach Dabo Swinney finally discovering the transfer portal, Clemson is projected to be among the top seeds in 2025.
But first, the Tigers are going to have to negotiate their way through a challenging schedule that will either toughen them up for the postseason … or help keep them out.
It starts with a home game against LSU. Then after a gimme against Troy, they open their conference schedule with a tricky game against an improved Georgia Tech. They also play Syracuse, SMU and Louisville – all of which won 9 or more games last year – along with a trip to Chapel Hill for a date with Belichick and his Tar Heels before finishing with its traditional Palmetto Bowl rivalry against South Carolina.
On the road.
Who will be this year’s surprise team?
Two seasons ago, Louisville came out of nowhere to win 10 games and advance to the ACC Championship Game in Jeff Brohm’s first season. Last year, SMU and Syracuse were the surprise teams, with the Mustangs going unbeaten during the regular season in their ACC debut and the Orange winning 10 games under rookie coach Fran Brown.
Besides talented quarterbacks and smart young coaches, all 3 of those teams shared a favorable schedule that avoided most if not all the teams picked to finish at the top of the league.
So if you’re looking for a team to emerge and have a breakout season in 2025, look no further than Virginia.
Maybe the ACC felt bad for coach Tony Elliott because all he’s been through since arriving in Charlottesville. But they gifted him and his team with a schedule conducive to success. Maybe not championship game success. But enough wins to get to a bowl game and solidify his still-shaky job status.
The Cavaliers don’t play Clemson. Or SMU. Or Syracuse. Assuming Florida State doesn’t make a miraculous recovery, their toughest conference game is at Louisville. All the others – Stanford, FSU, Wake Forest and Virgina Tech at home, NC State, UNC, Cal and Duke on the road – are reasonably winnable 50-50 games. Throw in a nonconference slate of Coastal Carolina, William & Mary and Washington State, and there’s reason for optimism.
The Calgorithm can be just as fired up about the coming season.
The Bears still have to figure out their quarterback situation. But if Oregon transfer Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele is even close to as good as they think he is, Justin Wilcox’s team will have a shot at making a dramatic move up the ACC standings with a schedule that avoids Clemson and Miami, has SMU at home and spreads its 3 trips East – to Boston College, Virginia Tech and Louisville – evenly over a 7-week stretch.
At the other end of the spectrum, Syracuse will pay the price for hitting the scheduling lottery a year ago by having to traverse an ACC journey that will take it on the road to Clemson, SMU, Georgia Tech and Miami to go with home dates against Duke, Pitt, UNC and Boston College.
Throw in nonconference tests agains Tennessee in Week 1 and Notre Dame in Week 13 – both in hostile territory – and the road to 10 wins will be a lot bumpier for Brown and his Orange.
Conference games will have to wait
For the first time since 2017, there won’t be any games matching conference opponents during the season’s opening week. All 17 teams will begin their schedules against outside competition.
There aren’t any ACC games on the Week 2 slate, either. Even though Virginia will play NC State in Raleigh on Sept. 6, the game won’t count in the league standings.
No, it doesn’t make any sense. But welcome to college football in 2025.
The first actual conference game will take place the following week, on Thursday night Sept. 11, when the Wolfpack travel to Winston-Salem to take on Wake Forest. Four other teams will break the ice in league play on Saturday, Sept. 13 when Boston College travels to Stanford and Clemson plays at Georgia Tech.
Bye, bye … bye
Similar to last year, the 2025 season will be spread out over 14 weeks. That means each team will have 2 open dates. Or in the case of Stanford, which starts a week earlier than everyone else, 3.
Besides the Cardinal, who will have Week 1 off after traveling to Hawaii on Aug. 23, Louisville will have the earliest break in its schedule with an open date in Week 3. NC State and Virginia Tech will go the longest before getting their first week off, playing 8 straight games before finally taking a breather on Oct. 18.
Boston College will have the longest stretch between open dates, 9 weeks between Sept. 20 and Nov. 22. Miami and Duke have the shortest, playing just 1 game each sandwiched around their 2 weeks off.
Odds and ends
If Florida State is going to bounce back from last season’s 2-10 disaster, it will have to get its work done early with a schedule that is heavily front-loaded with home games. Five of their first 6 games are in Tallahassee, starting with a difficult opener against Alabama before finishing with only 2 more home dates over the final 6 games. …
The addition of Cal, Stanford and SMU last year created 8 first-time matchups. This year there will be 5 more: Stanford at Virginia on Sept. 20, Florida State at Stanford on Oct. 18, Stanford at Miami on Oct. 2, Virginia at Cal on Nov. 1 and Cal at Louisville on Nov. 8. UVa, which is one of the oldest ACC members having joined the league in 1954, will play 2 of the ACC’s newest members in 2025.
Other than 2020, when the ACC’s schedule was revised because of the COVID pandemic, this will be the first time since 1979 that UNC and Georgia Tech have not met during the regular season. …
This year’s ACC Championship Game will take place on Saturday, Dec. 6 at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
