Clemson Football: Could ACC choose to realign for 2020 season?

Could the Clemson football program play in a realigned Atlantic Coast Conference in 2020? It’s certainly possible depending on how things progress.

Clemson football fans- along with the rest of the nation- are waiting patiently to see how, when and if there will be a 2020 College Football season.

Analysts and officials have floated out many different ideas as contingency plans if the season isn’t able to start on time, but it’s unclear what league officials are planning to do moving forward.

As the waiting game continues, many conference commissioners have come out and said that it is their desire to play football and that there could even be football played if the rest of the nation isn’t ready or willing.

Big 12 Conference Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said that being on campus for in-person classes wouldn’t even be a requirement for getting student-athletes back to play games.

In addition to his comments and previous quotes from the SEC, ACC Commissioner John Swofford told Stadium this week that he could see football being played, even if the entire conference wasn’t ready.

"“I suspect if the majority of schools can play, then they should play,” Swofford said. “It’s on our radar. We’ll cross that bridge later. Hopefully we won’t be in that situation.”"

Though it’s Swofford’s hope that the entire conference can play football, he isn’t going to say that the entire conference has to be available for it to go ahead with playing the sport. As far as which colleges would be ready and which ones wouldn’t, that would be nothing but speculation at this point.

But I do think it’s interesting that Swofford is open to the scenario that a portion of the league could play games while another portion doesn’t.

Could that lead to a realigned ACC for the 2020 season? Could we see Clemson football potentially play in a league with more regionally-based teams- out of North Carolina, Georgia and Florida- in their division?

Could some of those lost conference games be replaced with another conference opponent that wasn’t originally on the 2020 slate?

At this point, there are certainly more questions than answers, but it will be interesting to see what happens when it’s all said and done.