The ACC made a surprising announcement on Tuesday when they released part of their 2024 regular season schedule, however, they didn’t do it in a way that is common or even in a way that I’ve ever seen before. In a tweet announcement, the ACC announced their ‘Specialty Games’, which are games that will take place on Thursdays and Fridays as opposed to the common Saturday games.
SEC and Big 10 Will Dominate Saturdays
It’s no secret that the Big 10 and SEC are doing everything they can to choke out the rest of college football. There are already conversations about changing the new Playoff format to allow 3-4 Big 10 and SEC teams represented, leaving the remaining 4-6 spots to the remaining eight conferenes.
The SEC and Big 10 are going to dominate the TV ratings on Saturdays. With both conferences at 16 teams, a typical week may end up being five to six ESPN/ABC/ESPN2 games for the SEC, and five to six games for Fox, FS1, and CBS.
That leaves very limited spots for the Big 12, ACC, and other conferences to get on the main networks. Sure, the best Big 12 and ACC games of the day may make ABC or ESPN, but it is unlikely that more than two or three games of any other conference will make a major channel on a Saturday.
To get on TV, conferences are starting to get creative.
Following the MAC Model
The MAC is sometimes considered the bottom of the barrel when it comes to college football. They normally don’t put teams in the NY6, or even have teams that are ranked. Yet, a few years ago, they did something that is now inspiring conferences like the ACC.
Instead of only playing on Saturdays, the MAC decided to play in the middle of the week, creating ‘Maction.’ Suddenly, the MAC was getting TV ratings and interest that they had never had. For millions of viewers every year, people would turn on Maction, because it was the only football game on.
This was beneficial for everyone. Teams got viewers, the TV networks got higher viewership than they would if they ran soccer or volleyball, and the MAC as a conference got paid for it.
The ACC seems to be following the same formula in 2024.
𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰 𝗔𝗖𝗖 𝗙𝗢𝗢𝗧𝗕𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗦𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗗𝗨𝗟𝗘 𝗥𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘 🗓
Serving up some specialty games on Thursday and Friday Nights this fall 😤
📰 https://t.co/CRsD1FRwLr pic.twitter.com/AosaN82oOq
— ACC Football (@ACCFootball) January 23, 2024
Clarity for the ACC, Big 12, and Big 10
The ACC will be playing either on Thursday or Friday in eight of the 14 weeks next year, with five games happening during Week 1. In total, there will be eight ACC vs. ACC matchups, three ACC vs. FCS games, two ACC vs. Big 12, and one ACC vs. Big 10.
Here is the entire list:
- Thursday, August 29th
- North Carolina vs Minnesota (Big 10)
- NC State vs Western Carolina University (FCS)
- Wake Forest vs North Carolina A&T (FCS)
- Friday, August 30th
- Friday, September 20th
- Stanford vs Syracuse
- Friday, September 27th
- Virginia Tech vs Miami
- Thursday, October 17th
- Boston College vs Virginia Tech
- Friday, October 18th
- Duke vs Florida State
- Thursday, October 24th
- Syracuse vs Wake Forest
- Friday, October 25th
- Lousiville vs Boston College
- Friday, November 8th
- Cal vs Wake Forest
- Thursday November 21st
- NC State vs Georgia Tech
Will Other Conferences Follow the ACC?
The SEC and Big 10 are unlikely to really push for any tv slots outside of Saturdays because they won’t need to. With the Big 10 Network, Fox, CBS, and FS1, the Big 10 doesn’t have much need to add additional slots. The SEC has ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, and the SEC Network.
Unless the SEC or Big 10 could create a ‘Pac 12 After Dark’ kind of deal, those two conferences are likely out.
For every other conference, not jumping into the weekday game is leaving a big opportunity on the table. Below is an update on where each conference currently is.
- ACC – ACC already released their weekday schedule for 2024
- Big 12 – BYU historically plays on a Friday night the first weekend of October due to an LDS conference that takes place on Saturday. This past season, there was a total of six midweek games, and Bretty Yormark is willing to expand that in the future. He said, “When you think about the tonnage of college football on air on a Saturday, it provides a lot of opportunity for us to kind of build our profile on a Friday night.”
- Conference USA – Although they will never be given the same name as ‘Maction’, last year, the conference played quite a few midweek games. Interestingly, the conference was either all in, or not. In a conference with only nine members, there were weeks where all four games were played on Tuesday and Wednesday and weeks where they were only played on Saturday.
- MAC – Maction takes place every week during conference games with up to six games taking place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Last year, during Week 11, every single game was played during the week without a single game taking place on Saturday.
- Mountain West – Of all the G5 conferences, the Mountain West played the least throughout the week. Most weeks the MWC only played on Saturday, but there were a few exceptions when they played a single Friday game. One advantage that the Moutain West has is they can eat up super late TV windows. It wasn’t uncommon for there to be an MWC game on CBS Sports, FS2, ESPN2, and other channels late Saturday night when all other teams in the east had finished. The MWC also struggles on weekdays because the super late weeknight audience is small.
- Sun Belt –The Sun Belt played in midweek games most weeks through conference games, but not to the extent of other G5 leagues like CUSA and the MAC. Most of the time, it was only one game, however it was often the biggest game such as in Week 7 when Coastal Carolina played against App State on a Tuesday.
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