With Pittsburgh and Syracuse entering league competition, the ACC announced its plan for conference realignment Friday afternoon, as well as the future scheduling formats for all sports. Cuse and Pitt, the 13th and 14th members of the ACC, are projected to begin conference action in 2014.
In football, the Pittsburgh Panthers will be joining the Coastal Division, while the Orange of Syracuse will be joining N.C. State in the Atlantic Division. There will be a nine-game conference schedule, allowing teams to play every opponent in their division, two rotating opponents from the other division, and an annual crossover matchup.
The ACC is adding two games to the men’s and women’s basketball schedule, bringing the grand total to 18 per season.
Every team will have a singular primary partner they are guaranteed to play twice per season. The pairings have been made rather geographically. Syracuse has been paired with Boston College, while Pittsburgh will face Maryland. The remaining pairings are N.C. State-Wake Forest, North Carolina-Duke, Clemson-Georgia Tech, Miami-Florida State and Virginia-Virginia Tech.
So what does this mean for State basketball?
As stated before, the Wolfpack’s primary partner will be Wake Forest, meaning the Demon Deacons will be the only team the Pack is guaranteed to play twice each year.
In other words, N.C. State is no longer certain to play archrival UNC twice per season.
The Wolfpack nation is furious.
Andrew Snyder, sophomore in sports management, was not shy to voice his opinion after hearing the news.
“I’m very upset about it,” Snyder said. “Some people may look at it as it giving us an advantage because we get to play weaker competition, but I think to be the best, you have to beat the best.
“Back in the day when N.C. State was strong, with Jimmy V., they were playing and beating Carolina,” Snyder added. “I think Mark Gottfried said the same thing; you want to play Carolina, you want to beat them. Now we don’t have as many opportunities to do that.”
Not all students were already aware of the situation, including Mark Rose, junior in finance. Upon explaining the new conference realignments, Rose was taken aback.
“Well, that sucks,” Rose said, seeming to be at a loss for words. “You look forward to playing them twice a year. Now we can’t, and that’s kind of lame.”
The two students continued to stand their ground regarding the primary-partner system when asked if it would have an effect on N.C. State and ACC tradition.
“I feel like it’s killing ACC tradition,” Snyder said. “The ACC became a powerhouse back when the Dixie Classic was popular, the classic battles between N.C. State, Wake Forest, Carolina and Duke. In a perfect world, we should play each of the North Carolina teams twice, but apparently the ACC wants to kill that and John Swofford is doing a terrible job as [ACC] commissioner, I think.”
Rose agreed, but had additional reasoning.
“I think it’s a little bit worse for the conference, because the State/Carolina games, just like the Carolina/Duke games, are some the most highly televised, watched and attended games,” Rose stated. “To take one of them out, that takes away from the vendors, the RBC Center, the Dean Dome–that just takes funds from them, as well as the excitement from the students.”
Madelynn Campbell, a student at North Carolina and former sports writer for The Daily Tar Heel, said she feels the new realignments are robbing the students of both universities.
“As a UNC student, I don’t see the State/UNC rivalry as being as strong of a rivalry as State claims it is, but the games have so much passion from students from both teams,” Campbell said. “State enjoys hating UNC and UNC enjoys playing State. I know it’s always one of the games I especially look forward to, so the fact they may not play every year is extremely disappointing.
“Whenever there is such strong chemistry between teams and such strong enthusiasm, you hate to see anything separate that. Sports are all about passion and enthusiasm, so taking any of that away is never good.”
N.C. State Athletics Director Debbie Yow showed the first signs of optimism when asked about the realignments.
“N.C. State men’s basketball will make the best of the changes in ACC scheduling by creating a series with another nationally-ranked opponent,” Yow said via e-mail.
Yow additionally stated that head coach Mark Gottfried is currently in discussion with Kansas to play a series with the Jayhawks in hopes of having a game worthy of being nationally televised.
Despite Yow’s outlook on the situation, Gottfried seemed as frustrated as the fans.
“It’s disappointing, it is. I share the same feelings as the fans,” Gottfried said. “Personally I would love to see us play [UNC] twice a year, but unfortunately it is not going to happen.”
He tried to remain as positive as possible about the situation at hand, stating the two teams will still be able to play a lot, although he was uncertain how often that would be.
However, once per season may be the inevitable majority of future seasons. Since Virginia Tech and Miami entered the league in the 2004-2005 season, the Wolfpack has only played rival Duke twice in the regular season. Adding two teams to the league isn’t going to make it easier to schedule two per season against Duke or Carolina.
Despite the optimism expressed by Gottfried and Yow, many State fans are unsatisfied. Student frustration with the ACC was apparent at Saturday’s game against Wake Forest as students began chanting “Not our rival.”
With 2014 right around the corner, Snyder is unsettled by the thought the Tar Heels may not play at the RBC Center his senior year.
“We’re probably going to be pretty good in 2014,” Snyder said. “We’ve got a good recruiting class coming in and that would be one of our best chances to beat Carolina. I would love to see that happen and storm the floor. I want to make Roy Williams leave 14 seconds early.”
