Clemson Football: Potential ACC realignment in store for 2020 season

The 2020 Clemson football season could look very different this fall

If we’re indeed able to have a Clemson football season this coming fall, the logistics and protocols will make it look much different than anything we’ve ever seen before.

While the Clemson football team continues to prepare for the upcoming season, ACC officials are hard-at-work looking at numbers, talking with health experts and coming up with plans as to how the season can be conducted safely and as completely as possible.

There is one proposal being discussed that could completely flip the ACC  on its head with divisional realignment.

David Teel, of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reported that the conference is considering one proposal that would allow the league to straw away from its Atlantic and Coastal divisions for the 2020 season and implement a three-division format- “regional pods,” as they are being called. This plan would also allow the ACC and SEC to keep their out-of-conference rivalry games and this would include Notre Dame, creating three divisions with five teams apiece.

What would a divisional pod look like for Clemson football?

According to the report from Teel, ACC teams spend somewhere in the range of $80,000-$100,000 per charter flight. A bus trip, however, costs about $15,000-$25,000.

Using these region pods, programs would be able to save somewhere in the ball park of $55,000- $85,000 per road contest and that would help offset some of the lost revenue that is bound to be prevalent. While it certainly wouldn’t completely offset the loss of revenue generated from ticket sales at full capacity, it would potentially keep Athletic Departments in the black.

So how would it work?

The proposal hopes to create at least a 9-game season where teams would play each pod rival twice, accounting for eight games. In partnership with the SEC, they could then add a ninth and potentially even a 10th game. If the SEC couldn’t offer a team a game, they could schedule their games against other ACC schools outside of their pod.

What would Clemson’s regional pod look like?

Here’s our best guess:

Pod 1: Florida State, Miami, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Wake Forest

Pod 2:  Duke, North Carolina, NC State, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Pod 3: Boston College, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, Louisville

Of course, you would see some ‘home-cooking’ as the ACC always does with that Pod 2. UNC, Duke and NC State would have minimal travel while in Pod 1, Clemson and Miami would have to either still charter a flight (which doesn’t save the money) or make about a 12-14 hour drive to play one another.

While traveling would be equal among the pods themselves (since everyone has to travel for a home-and-home anyway), the travel would not be equal throughout the conference, which could cause a strain on some Athletic Departments while giving relief to others.

One interesting portion of this plan, though, is the SEC partnership. In this proposal, the ACC is saying that teams could add not just one non-conference game with an SEC opponent, but potentially two.

In that circumstance, we could see Clemson football add a game against a team like Georgia or Florida in addition to the Tigers’ in-state rivalry against South Carolina.

Can you imagine a 10-game schedule that featured: Two games against Florida State, two games against Miami, two games against Georgia Tech, two games against Wake Forest, a non-conference tilt against Florida and then an in-state rivalry game against South Carolina? Talk about a wild season that would be.