ACC Schedule Disparity

[Jephthah]

I took it upon myself to do some research this afternoon on the ACC schedule.

As you know Miami has a bye before our game with them. How does the rest of the schedule shake out and what does the rest of the conference have to deal with. Specifically I looked at just ACC teams and their opponents. What does each ACC teams opponent have the week before the game? I counted byes and FCS opponents for each team.

Three teams have opponents have have neither a bye or FCS opponent the week before them. Three teams have 1 of either. Six teams have 2 of either. One team has 3 of either. And one team has 4 of either.

Of course the one team is Georgia Tech who has 3 opponents with byes before their game and 1 with an FCS team.

The average for all ACC teams is 1.57. How does the schedule get this out of whack?

 

[beej67]

How does the schedule get this out of whack?

Teams can request when they take their bye weeks, and the league can grant them. Maybe we're lucky that they only granted half of their requests.

Alabama has this problem as well. Lots of teams request bye weeks before playing them. They don't cry about it though.

 

[LegendaryGT]

Georgia Tech sits on the critical point on a graph of "pain in the ass to play" versus "political power in the ACC".

 

[05GTCorndog]

The way I've heard it explained is that each team can submit a 'wish list' to the ACC for scheduling purposes and they might get 1 or 2 of the top ones granted. For example, we might ask not to have a home game during Fall Break and to have a week off before UGA. It makes sense to me that teams would more frequently request extra time off before us.

Regardless, efffff the ACC.

 

[gth874t]

Solid analysis, thanks for posting.

Hugely disappointing that it ended up this way. I'd like to think this is an isolated case and that different teams are stuck with the bye-week blues in different years but who knows.

A quick addendum to this that's even more infuriating - for the North Carolina teams, they are averaging 0.5 FCS opp whereas non-North Carolina teams are averaging 0.64 FCS opponents. Average bye-week blues teams are about the same (1.0 NC teams, 0.9 non-NC teams).

 

[JJacket]

Our open date is before Duke. Yes!

 

[aeromech]

Teams can request when they take their bye weeks, and the league can grant them. Maybe we're lucky that they only granted half of their requests.

Alabama has this problem as well. Lots of teams request bye weeks before playing them. They don't cry about it though.

Looks like this schedule nuance is one of the few things GT has in common with Bama. Oh, and they cry about it too:
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2010/10/bye-bye_bye-week_issue_tide_ha.html

 

[gtrower]

I was tracking this stat for the years since CPJ took over. I'll have to go back and update for the last season or two, but the trends I remember finding were VT and GT being disproportionately disadvantaged by this in the ACC and UNC disproportionately advantaged - with the particular point of emphasis being division opponents have bye weeks before you and vice versa. Throw in the fact that we've had Clemson as our crossover and its impressive CPJ has won the Coastal 3 times.

 

[ScionOfSouthland]

Our open date is before Duke. Yes!

This is our year to beat the man spreader

 

[clapper]

Since GT & BC opened the season against one another, neither had a game the week before that one too. That makes 4 teams with an open date before they play(ed) us. Makes your numbers look even worse, if you really want a big cry.

 

[GoGATech]

Clemson and FSU both have a bye the week before they play each other so that sort of cancels out. Same with us and Duke.

 

[BarrelORum]

We should request our opponents do not have bye weeks before playing us.

 

[JJacket]

We did play 3 games in 12 days - one of them overseas. Pretty rough stretch.

 

[aeromech]

We should request our opponents do not have bye weeks before playing us.

Bama went past requesting and got a rule change

A new SEC rule was passed that means no team has to play more than three league opponents coming off a bye in a single season. That rule will go into effect next season.

The ACC may have a similar rule; but we could push to amend it with a FCS opponent clause.

 

[coit]

We did play 4 games in 19 days - one of them overseas. Pretty rough stretch.

Fixed.