ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 commissioners: Current schedules will be honored

Heading into today’s press conference formalizing the alliance between the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12, it had been discussed that the scheduling portion of the deal would not be fully fleshed out. That sentiment was reinforced by the commissioners Tuesday. 

When asked about details and timelines, there was only one certainty expressed. 

“I think one thing to keep in mind is that we promised each other we’re not going to interfere with any existing contracts. This is not about getting out of contracts and blowing anything up,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said. “This is about honoring those existing contracts, but also building relationships between these three like-minded conferences as we look forward from a scheduling standpoint.”

“What this allows us to do is to focus on the existing games that we have,” Warren added. “How do we build storylines around those? How do we expand those schedules?”

These conferences often already schedule games against each other. Notable matchups between the conferences this season include Ohio State and Oregon plus Michigan and Washington. Notre Dame, who counts as an ACC opponent for scheduling reasons, plays Purdue, Wisconsin, USC and Stanford this year. 

As ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg noted in a tweet on Tuesday, there are already 68 football games between members of these conferences scheduled from 2022-2035. When Notre Dame is factored into the equation, that number jumps to 103.

Nine-game conference schedules will be difficult to keep

Current Power Five leagues play either eight or nine-game conference schedules. If this alliance will entail adding an opponent from the other two leagues into schedules each year, it will be incredibly difficult to do so if the Big Ten and the Pac-12 do not reduce their current conference game count. 

“We’re a conference that has nine conference games,” Warren said. “So all of these different issues which we knew were on the horizon over these last couple of years, now with the scheduling alliance, they’re put on the table now. We’ll have to address those to make sure that we’re able to expand the relationship with the ACC and the Pac-12.”

Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff added that the Pac-12 is locked into their nine-game conference schedule through the end of their media rights deals with ESPN and Fox for three more years, but he encourages teams in his league to continue to schedule additional Power Five opponents. 

“There’s no intention as part of the alliance on increasing the number of games that football teams play during a regular season, and there’s no intention to stop our teams from being able to — within the alliance — also schedule games against any other conference that they want to schedule games against” Kliavkoff said. “They’ll have flexibility with games that they’ll be able to schedule.”