On Tuesday afternoon, the ACC announced its 2026 conference slate for the football season, and it’s a mess. Due to prior scheduling agreements and the unfortunate math of a 17-team conference, twelve teams will play a 9-game ACC schedule and five teams will play an 8-game ACC schedule.
Then starting in 2027, sixteen teams will play a 9-game ACC schedule annually, with one team each season playing 8 league games and scheduling two Power Four opponents outside the conference to accommodate the 10 Power Four games requirement.
The ACC also announced that it will update its tiebreaker policy ahead of the 2026 season, likely to avoid the situation that it found itself in this year, where ACC champion Duke missed the College Football Playoff and put the conference at risk of missing the CFP altogether.
Boston College is one of the five teams that will remain on an 8-game ACC schedule in 2026, alongside Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech, and North Carolina. BC’s 2026 conference opponents will be:
Home: Florida State, Pitt, Syracuse, Virginia Tech
Away: Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami, SMU
The conference has constantly been on its back feet in this new era of college football, defending itself against lawsuits from its own members and adding new schools to stay relevant. We don’t really know how long the conference will stay afloat in its current form, but it’s expected that its most popular members like Florida State, Clemson, UNC, and others could receive invites from other conferences soon and make the decision to cut ties with the ACC within the next 3-5 years. Financial costs of a conference break-up will decrease significantly after the 2029-30 academic year.
It also seems possible that new members could be added before a big conference break-up happens, with schools like Tulane, Memphis, South Florida, and others having been speculated as potential additions to offset losses. An addition of new members could help to fix the mess of a schedule that this football arrangement has turned into.
