Clemson Football: Predicting what a 2020 conference-only schedule could look like

The 2020 Clemson football schedule seems it will be changed almost inevitably

The 2020 Clemson football schedule is going to be turned on its head at some point or another, in all likelihood.

With the Big Ten’s announcement that it will only play conference games during the 2020 fall season, there is growing speculation that the rest of the Power-5 conferences will do something of the same, even if it looks a little differently.

That being said, there is nothing official currently on what the Clemson football schedule will look like, so here’s our best prediction.

Predicting a 2020 Clemson football conference-only schedule

Thinking through what the ACC could do- and its already widely-announced stance that it would include Notre Dame– we can get a fairly simply idea of what the conference could do.

That being said, it makes a lot of sense for the conference to do two things if it elects to go this route:

1. Realign for the 2020 season and pick the best two teams to go to the conference championship
2. Partner with the SEC to preserve rivalries and add geographic-sense non-conference games.

In this scenario, we’re going to say that we’re looking at a nine-game ACC schedule with potential for a non-conference game or two.

Divisions could be aligned as such:

Northern Division:

• Boston College
• Syracuse
• Pittsburgh
• Virginia
• Virginia Tech
• Louisville
• Duke (geographically, this is probably the toughest decision)

Southern Division:

• Clemson
• Florida State
• Miami
• Georgia Tech
• Wake Forest
• N.C. State
• North Carolina

You would play every team in your division (6 others) with the potential for playing 2-3 others in the other division. Determining whether you played two others or three others would depend on if you scheduled Notre Dame.

So, Clemson’s schedule in-conference, for reference, would be the southern division teams, Notre Dame and two other Northern Division teams, preferably in fairly close proximity, though that can’t always be worked out.

The ACC could then work with the SEC to create potential non-conference games, and this might could even lead to Notre Dame being given a couple more games in place of a non-conference opponent for the ACC- especially for teams like Syracuse and Boston College who don’t currently have the Irish on their schedule but would make more sense for them to play than for them to travel all the way down to Florida, for example.

That being said, here’s what a potential Clemson football schedule could look like under these circumstances:

• @ Georgia Tech
• vs. N.C. State
• @ Wake Forest
• vs. Miami
• @ Florida State
• vs. North Carolina
• @ Notre Dame
• vs. Louisville
• @ Duke
• vs. South Carolina (non-conference)

Notice that the games played out of division are placed in the back-half of the season just in case they need to be moved or if there needs to be a change.

Overall, it’s tough to know what the ACC will do at this point, but there are possibilities for the conference to play the season, in some form or fashion.