Clemson Football: Reports for new ACC schedule are coming together

Clemson football fans won’t have to wait much longer to know the fate of the 2020 season

While things will certainly be different, it does seem that we’ll see Clemson football played this fall.

Though many have doubts about the current landscape of College Football and how the sport can be played in a pandemic, it seems that every Power-5 conference is moving forward with the idea of playing football during the fall.

Earlier this week, the Pac-12 announced that it would be playing a 10-game conference schedule that started two weeks later than the previously-scheduled start to the season- now slated for Saturday, Sept. 19- and that the Pac-12 Championship game would still be played as it was originally scheduled.

While we’ve waited to hear official word from the ACC, Big 12 and SEC, reports are surfacing that the conference is heavily favoring a particular proposal.

The Stadium’s Brett McMurphy reported that the ACC is currently planning to play a 10-game conference schedule with one out-of-conference game, likely against an SEC or Big 12 opponent. The conference would include Notre Dame and would do away with divisions for the 2020 season.

The conference would then select the top two performers from the season to participate in the ACC Championship game.

What many Clemson football fans- and ACC fans, in general- have asked is what that would mean for Notre Dame.

Well, while it’s not entirely clear what the outcome of the vote will be, the conference is planning to allow the Fighting Irish to participate in the conference title game- if they have one of the two best records in the ACC- pending approval from University Presidents, according to ACC Beat Writer David Teel.

Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel also confirmed these reports and said that the ACC is currently still debating about its start date. The conference is considering September 12, 19, and 26 as its potential start dates for the 2020 season.

The 2020 Clemson football season won’t start on time, but it’s looking more likely that it’s going to happen

A couple of weeks ago people were saying that they weren’t sure if we were going to have a College Football season at all. Fast-forward to today and we’re talking about scheduling and conferences are moving ahead with the idea of playing this fall, even if that means delaying the start of the season by a couple of weeks.

Under this proposal, Clemson would keep its games against Notre Dame and South Carolina. The Tigers would then fill out their schedule with eight other conference games.

In many ways, this actually could create more excitement for Clemson football fans looking for competitive opponents.

With no divisions, Clemson would likely face teams like Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Florida State, Miami, Duke, Wake Forest and NC State. After all, it would only make sense that the conference tries to schedule as many geographically-favorable match-ups as possible.

It will be interesting to see what this new conference schedule looks like when it’s released and how the match-ups change for the Tigers.