A Closer Look At ACC Football Openers (On The Road…Again)

'12 Football ACC Rankings & Lists Stat of the Day25

While the March Madness of college basketball is almost upon us, the ACC football schedules also came out this week. There has also been discussion lately about favortism in the ACC both here on the blog and the forums.

With that in mind, let’s fast forward to the early part of the football season and that first conference game. Perhaps your team has played some tune up games against 1-AA teams or maybe you’ve played a barometer game against a BCS power. But now comes that first conference game, a chance to see how you stack up against your peers, establish your position early within the division and generally get the season off to a good start.

Starting off ACC play within the friendly confines of your own stadium with the home field advantage is certainly a plus. Since the ACC has expanded to 12 teams in 2005, the road team in their opening conference game has a record of 14-23 (.378). You would certainly like to open ACC play at home every year, but reasonably you can’t expect to do so every season.

And you certainly can’t expect that if you’re NC State. In 2012, for the 6th straight season the Wolfpack will open ACC play on the road.

On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again…

Ratio Of Home ACC Openers To Road ACC Openers
In the 8 seasons going back to the beginning of the 12 team schedule in 2005 through the upcoming 2012 schedule, let’s take a look at the ratio of home to away games for the opening ACC game.

5 Home Games & 3 Away Games
Florida St
Georgia Tech
Maryland
North Carolina
Virginia Tech
Wake Forest

4 Home Games & 4 Away Games
Clemson

3 Home Games & 5 Away Games
Duke
Miami
Virginia

The ratios of 5/3, 4/4 and 3/5 seem pretty reasonable to me. But you’ve probably noticed 2 schools are missing from that list. One of course is the Wolfpack with 2 ACC home openers and then 6 straight years on the road. The other is Boston College with 7 ACC home openers and only 1 on the road.

Maybe there are legit reasons for the schedule to work out this way but I’m not sure what they could be. Maybe the weather is a factor in Boston and they want to BC to play at home more earlier in the year. But with State I can’t think of any, especially when we’re usually on the road in October anyway because of the State Fair.

Streaks
As I’ve already mentioned, the Wolfpack will now have a streak of 6 straight ACC road openers. In the previous 5 games the Pack has a record of 1-4, the lone win against Georgia Tech in Atlanta in 2010.

Miami will currently have a 4 game ACC road opener streak and Duke’s will be at 3. Maryland and Wake Forest have also had to open on the road 3 straight years in the past.

Compare that to the fact that North Carolina, Boston College and Georgia Tech have never opened ACC play on the road 2 years in a row. This year Maryland will open ACC play at home for the 4th straight season. Boston College in their 1st 4 years in the conference got to open ACC play at home.

Conclusions
Maybe in the big scheme of things this isn’t a big deal and this whole post is much ado about nothing. I’m not really sure myself one way or the other. Although it was enough for TOB to make mention of it last year in a press conference. Maybe there are legit reasons why the schedule is the way it is. But doesn’t it seem a little bit wrong to send the Wolfpack on the road to the start the ACC season for 6 straight years? Especially when no other school in the conference has had to do the same and some (including the Tar Heels) have never even had to do it twice?

When so many State fans these days are at odds with the ACC front office about officiating, Karl Hess, expansion, losing the home and home with Carolina in basketball, etc, etc, they’re not helping themselves by adding one more log to the fire. Or with us State fans, maybe more like one more jet fueled track drier to the fire.

About WV Wolf

Graduated from NCSU in 1996 with a degree in statistics. Born and inbred in West "By God" Virginia and now live in Raleigh where I spend my time watching the Wolfpack, the Mountaineers and the Carolina Hurricanes as well as making bar graphs for SFN. I'm @wvncsu on the Twitter machine.

'12 Football ACC Rankings & Lists Stat of the Day

25 Responses to A Closer Look At ACC Football Openers (On The Road…Again)

  1. state73 03/01/2012 at 2:27 PM #

    Just another way for the “blue” ACC to stick it to the red-headed stepchild ! Maybe its time to explore other opportunities.

  2. Paramarine 03/01/2012 at 2:35 PM #

    The numbers don’t lie.

  3. tjfoose1 03/01/2012 at 2:40 PM #

    Don’t know how much, but I imagine a part of it is due to incompetence at the ACC office.

    The B1G can have their schedule out a year or more in advance, while the acc struggles to to make it within months.

  4. UpstateSCWolfpack 03/01/2012 at 3:00 PM #

    I actually emailed Dick Christy this morning about this very thing. He emailed me back and did have a point that we do have 3 of our last four at home, and that is a plus. And, I am aware that he can’t say anything negative about Greensboro’s decisions. I did reply back that the final four game stretch is good for State, but that six years of ACC openers on the road is an issue that hopefully the department is pushing back on with Swofford. I do believe this is a direct response to TOB complaining last season about 5 straight road ACC openers.

  5. LRM 03/01/2012 at 3:03 PM #

    Not that I don’t love a good conspiracy theory against the joke of a league the ACC has become, but I wonder how much this is affected by a) State’s preference against a home game during the fair and/or b) the ACC trying to put non-rival Thanksgiving Weekend games (like we always get) in stadiums where fans will show up.

    Since 2000, State has ended the season at home every year except 2010.

    Look at the SEC, where league games are played in the same order and on the same weekend every season, so teams know years in advance which open weeks they’ll have. The ACC changes it around every season, with seemingly little rhyme or reason.

  6. ruffles31 03/01/2012 at 4:04 PM #

    LRM, I agree. I can tell you right now (well before the SEC expanded to 14) what weeks and in what order Tennessee would play their SEC opponents. Heck, when Vandy asked Tennessee to move their game up one week and play Kentucky for the finale a couple of years ago it was a big media story. But as for the ACC, it is like they throw the order out in a big random number generator.

    Wouldn’t it make more sense to have it be one person’s job in the conference to sit down and make up a standard ACC schedule template (especially now with the 14 team conference) so that each team will know when it would typically have conference games and then non-conference teams can be filled out accordingly.

    Heck, you give me about 2 hours and I can get that mostly done I bet.

    If you have certain games that are done at the end of the year:

    VT-UVA
    South Carolina-Clemson
    Georgia-Georgia Tech
    Duke-UNC
    Vanderbilt-Wake Forest
    Florida State-Florida

    Add other games that could be end of the year fixtures:
    NC State-Maryland
    Syracuse-Boston College
    Pitt-Miami

    And then work your way back. It isn’t rocket science people.

    All you would have to know is that each team gets one “preference” for football scheduling.

    NC State – no home games during the fair
    UNC – no home games that actually people come to

    oops

    UNC – no Thursday night home games
    Clemson – no Thursday night home games
    BC – possibly “ACC home opener”

    etc.

    and then work through the schedule. It boggles the mind how the schedule is altered year after year.

  7. ToddFullerismyHomeboy 03/01/2012 at 4:08 PM #

    asinine.

  8. 61Packer 03/01/2012 at 4:09 PM #

    No home football games at NCSU during the State Fair to me is bad business. If the object of the State Fair is to make money, why not have one home game during that time? You’ll have 50,000 people there already, and most of ’em would walk across the street to the fairgrounds.

  9. ruffles31 03/01/2012 at 4:37 PM #

    ^61Packer, have you ever been to a home game during the fair? Epic fail. Parking is a complete disaster as both events use some of the same lots and the traffic involved with an average of 100,000 fair attendees and then adding 57,000 football fans in one confined area is not good.

    I understand your line of thought but the reality is that a home football game has always been a horrendous experience in terms of getting to/away from the game.

  10. Wulfpack 03/01/2012 at 4:48 PM #

    Parking would be an absolute nightmare with both a ball game and the fair. I don’t want any part of that.

  11. WV Wolf 03/01/2012 at 4:58 PM #

    One year they had a noon football game and a 7pm hockey game…during the fair. That worked out well, you can imagine the traffic flow that day. The Canes finally wised up and they go on a west coast road trip every year during the fair.

  12. BJD95 03/01/2012 at 4:59 PM #

    I went to the Miami game several years ago, which coincided with the fair. It took my about three miles to go 1 mile on I-40 to get to my exit.

    At least all the other occupants of my vehicle took the opportunity to get rip-roaring drunk.

    Never, ever again. I would sooner set my hair on fire.

  13. TheAliasTroll 03/01/2012 at 6:11 PM #

    Oh it’s just the ACC sending another clear message, “Know your place, Wolfpack.”

    I remember that year with the fair/hockey game/football game. What a nightmare.

  14. LRM 03/01/2012 at 7:39 PM #

    That ESPN Gameday/Miami game during the fair in 2004 was an epic disaster. That game ended around 11:30 and those of us in the Trinity Lot got onto Trinity Road around 1am.

  15. Wolf74 03/01/2012 at 7:39 PM #

    6 straight ACC openings on the road. Conspiracy? No NEVER!

    Complete and total incompetence from an ACC office that has been stocked by a “bably blue homer” with representatives that understand they must show a complete lack of concern of any team that doesn’t wear blue. Yep!

  16. BureauOfMines 03/01/2012 at 8:13 PM #

    Figures don’t lie but liars will figure.

  17. gotohe11carolina 03/01/2012 at 10:02 PM #

    I like the fair game. didn’t we used to play Carolina on fair weekend. I think that’d be the perfect rivalry $*&*-storm that excites ESPN so much. maybe we could play for the whole hog trophy, or the golden “flagship”.

  18. mak4dpak 03/01/2012 at 10:46 PM #

    I was in the football/hockey/fair disaster, and never ever wanna do it again. Thank you for never ever having a home game during the fair. Wise decision.

  19. tractor57 03/02/2012 at 3:37 AM #

    Back in my days on campus there was a home football game during the state fair – alternating between UNX and the Tiggers. Even then with a smaller stadium and possibly a smaller fair attendance traffic was bloody awful. I can’t even imagine how bad that would be today.

  20. PackerInRussia 03/02/2012 at 6:29 AM #

    “It took my about three miles to go 1 mile on I-40 to get to my exit.”

    the space-time continuum itself was altered? That’s amazing 🙂

    I have memories of fair games. I always thought, why in the world do they have games during the fair. It was an awful experience. It did not make me want to go over to the fair. It made me hate the fair. I have no idea what fair/non-football patrons’ perspective on it is, but I’d imagine it’s similar. I don’t know what it’s like now, but it was bad enough leaving games without thousands of extra people at the fair. Just bad planning in my opinion. Glad they’re avoiding it now.

  21. BJD95 03/02/2012 at 6:55 AM #

    Ha, three hours I meant to say. But it certainly did feel like a disruption of the space/time continuum.

  22. PackHooligan 03/02/2012 at 9:08 AM #

    No home game during the fair is the best scheduling decision that NC State has ever made. Anyone who has had to experience that nightmare should agree.

  23. pack80 03/02/2012 at 10:28 AM #

    Wow, I’m a bit older but I usually enjoyed the fair/football game, especially when it was a 1 pm game,(i know those times are gone) but we would get up early, difficult for some of you I know, arrive about 8:30 and park w/ little trouble; go to the fair and eat breakfast; head back to tailgate about 10:30 and down a few adult beverages; watch NCSU victory; head back to the fair for some fried ish and then head for home about 6 when the traffic died down. Now it was a long day but if you planned for it, it was a fun day.
    Go Pack.

  24. Primewolf 03/03/2012 at 12:52 AM #

    Each school gets only rare special requests. For us to waste one on not having a home game during state fair crap is stupid. Whats the big deal. Traffic is a bitch anyway. Use our request for something important. Mid Oct is the best time for football anyway.

    When is our AD and Chanc going to stand up for something. I can’t belive 10 schools in this conf can’t kick out the blue terds and form our own conf.

  25. wolfmanmat 03/03/2012 at 7:37 AM #

    It’s the ACC; it’s a weak football conference. We should be winning home and away. We may not start at home, but at least we are getting home games at the end. We also have had several Thursday games recently, which is good exposure for the program….even though I personally don’t like them because of Friday work.

Leave a Reply