Atlantic Coast Conference
The Atlantic Coast Conference (or ACC) is an American college athletic conference, affiliated with the NCAA’s Division I, that was formed in June 1953. The current member institutions are located in the mid- and south-Atlantic coastal states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
Charter members included Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina, and Wake Forest; Virginia was invited shortly after the 1953 football season concluded. The seven charter members were formerly aligned with the Southern Conference.
The only former member of the ACC is South Carolina (1953-1971), which is now aligned with the Southeastern Conference.
Current members (and year joined)
The ACC expanded from nine to 11 schools in 2004, with Miami and Virginia Tech joining from the Big East Conference. Boston College will join in 2005, bringing the total to 12 schools.
Sports
Member schools participate in baseball, men's and women's basketball, field hockey, football, men's and women's golf, men's and women's lacrosse, women's rowing, men's and women's soccer, softball, men's and women's swimming, men's and women's tennis, indoor and outdoors track, cross country, women's volleyball, and wrestling.
The ACC is considered one of the best men's college basketball conferences in the NCAA. For example, during February 2004, six teams were ranked in the top 25 at one time. One of the unranked teams, Maryland, was the National Champion in 2002 (and the ACC Champion in March 2004) and Clemson, who was ranked last in the ACC, had a strength of schedule ranked #1 in the country. The addition of Miami and Virginia Tech is expected to make the Atlantic Coast Conference more competitive in most sports, especially football; however, both schools' men's basketball programs, especially Virginia Tech's, are generally regarded as weaker than the rest of the ACC.
Football divisional layout
As of 2005, the ACC will begin divisional play in football. Both division leaders will compete in a playoff game at ALLTEL Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida to determine the ACC championship. This division structure leads to each team playing the following games:
- Five games within its division (one against each opponent)
- One game against a "permanent rival" from the other division
- Two rotating games against teams in the other division
In the table below, the teams are listed in columns by division (as yet unnamed), and horizontally paired by permanent cross-divisional rivalry (not necessarily the school's closest traditional rival).
Traditional rivalries in the ACC
As with most ACC traditions, the conference's classic rivalries began on the (men's) basketball court. Before the 2004 expansion, the ACC was able to maintain a full home-and-home double round-robin basketball schedule, meaning each team played each other team both at home and away each season. Coupled with the conference's geographic compactness (especially before Florida State joined in 1991), this enhanced conference cohesiveness and built a strong, interlocking web of rivalries, as each school could generally find something historical to be upset with each other school about. Some rivalries were, of course, stronger than others -- notably those among the four "Tobacco Road" schools located in North Carolina.
Lesser-known are the ACC's football rivalries. With the recent expansion, intra-state rivalries in Florida and Virginia that have always been more significant in football than basketball are now under the conference banner. This gives them added meaning, as these games will have more direct impact on postseason bowl game invitations.
Some of the ACC's classic rivalries include:
Extra-conference rivalries involving ACC members include:
See also
