N.C. State and North Carolina have met twice a season on the basketball court every year since 1919. That's about to change.
The ACC announced its future scheduling plans for football and men's basketball on Friday and there will be more conference games in both sports, with the pending addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse, but there will be fewer games between traditional ACC rivals.
The loss of a guaranteed home-and-home series in men's basketball between N.C. State and North Carolina is a part of the "reality of expansion," N.C. State AD Debbie Yow said Friday.
"In a perfect world, we would play Duke and Carolina twice a year every year but there are no perfect solutions," Yow said Friday.
Under the expanded 18-game basketball schedule, each school will only have one permanent partner, as opposed the three-partner model that has been used since the league expanded in 2004. State's partner will be Wake Forest and Carolina will pair up with Duke. That means State and Carolina will only play once twice a season in one of every three years.
The last time State and Carolina didn't play twice a year in basketball was during the 1918-19 season. The teams met home-and-home the next season and have every season since.
The conference football schedule will be expanded to nine games, one more than the current format, which means each school will drop a nonconference opponent.
"I think nine conference games will largely be considered to be better by our fans," Yow said. "Certainly, they would rather see us play an ACC team rather than a I-AA opponent."
The ACC still doesn't know when Pitt and Syracuse will leave the Big East. The changes for the basketball schedule take effect for the 2012-13 season, whether the league has 12 teams or 14 teams.
In football, Syracuse will join State in the Atlantic Division and Pitt will be in the Coastal with Duke and Carolina.
State and Carolina will continue to play every season in football. The change in the basketball schedule has not been received well by some of State's fans.
Yow, who was the AD at Maryland when the league added Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech in the mid-2000s, said she was in favor of expansion then and still is now, despite the changes in the culture of the basketball schedule.
"Of course, I miss the round-robin but we needed expansion," Yow said. "We needed new markets and inventory for ESPN, just like the SEC, Pac-10 and Big Ten did."
Comments
The ECU solution ...
Sat, 02/04/2012 - 12:26 — hmi100Remember when ECU lobbied the NC Legislature to force NCSU and UNC to play them in football? Well guess what ... you can do it too! Time to tell ESPN/ABC/Disney to stuff it! Contact your State Rep and demand a return of the Big Four Basketball Tourney. It can be rotated yearly through ALL four schools to be the host city. It will give the State of NC fans what they want, bring revenue to Winston Salem, Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh; and we can option the TV rights to the highest bidder or broadcast it through UNC Public TV. I'm tired of urban network media execs dictating what I can or cannot see in sports programming. The ACC Commissioner is a joke and is held hostage to some fantasy BCS football pipe dream. ACC expansion was and is a bad idea. Continue to chase the money and destroy the rivalries that made the major sports interesting. College sports are a regional phenomenon with little viewing interest outside of the region. For example, I don't think a West Coast fan gives a flip about an East Coast team unless that fan is an displaced alumnus of the team. There are private school exceptions like Notre Dame. It's time to put a stop to the college sports arms race and either adhere to a student athlete model as originally created or drop the charade and move the teams off campus into the semi-professional farm leagues that they are becoming.
Do you know why the Dixie Classic was disbanded ?
Sat, 02/04/2012 - 14:08 — gvillegatrPoint shaving. Had that not happened or been unearthed, the possibility of the Big Four would still be happening. At worse, younger folks like myself would have seen it for awhile.
nobody needed to do anything.
Fri, 02/03/2012 - 19:39 — gercohennobody needed to do anything
inventory
Fri, 02/03/2012 - 19:38 — gercohenso college basketball and football is just inventory for ESPN. Did Yow actually say that?
Yes
Sat, 02/04/2012 - 14:11 — gvillegatrBut state fans like to blame it all on Swofford instead of the four, four and four around the conference who motioned to expand the conference.
The Big 4 should play each
Fri, 02/03/2012 - 16:17 — ProwlingWoofieThe Big 4 should play each other twice every year in basketball, home and home, regardless of who is in the conference.
I'd favor retraction to the old 7 team conference, myself...
I detest the Big Least, and that's what Swofford has recreated. Thanks, John-Boy !