The ACC released its new seven-year, 17-team plan as conference realignment continues to reshape college football as we know it. With the additions of Stanford, SMU and California Berkeley, the ACC now includes 17 total teams.

Due to these new additions, the ACC has gotten rid of conference divisions, meaning that the two teams with the highest ACC winning percentage will advance to the conference championship game rather than the two divisional champions. Over the next seven years, each team will play each other at least twice, once at home and once on the road.

In addition to these changes to postseason play, most ACC teams were dealt out protected matchups for opponents they would play every year until 2030, including NC State. The Wolfpack’s protected matchups consist of UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke and Wake Forest. The Triangle schools were allotted more protected matchups than any other schools, with each getting three while most other schools got two.

Teams such as Clemson, Louisville and Georgia Tech got the short end of the stick regarding protected ACC matchups — the Tigers only have one protected matchup against Florida State every year, whereas the latter two don’t have any. 

It’s an interesting move to give two teams zero yearly matchups, especially if your main goal is to create new rivalries and establish the ACC as a conference that is here to stay. Although both teams’ largest rivals lie in the SEC, you would think the ACC could afford to give them one annual matchup even if it is against each other.

It’s especially odd that Clemson got the short end of the stick given that it is the only ACC team to have success at the highest level in recent memory. The Tigers have won two national championships in the past seven years — 2016 and 2018 — and they are the only ACC team that have appeared in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff more than once since the format debuted in 2015.

With its national success in football, the cash cow of college athletics, and many other sports, Clemson is a school any conference would be over the moon to have. After the ACC’s recent changes, it’s no secret Clemson is looking around trying to find ways to get out of the ACC’s current grant of rights. 

Clemson voted against ACC expansion over the summer, and having annual games against Georgia Tech and NC State taken away from it likely only pushed it farther towards a breaking point. 

Not only is the ACC aggravating current members with the expansion, but at a basic level the decision just doesn’t make logical sense — adding three teams west of the Mississippi to the Atlantic Coast Conference seems rushed and appears to be a decision only made to compete with the expansion of the Big Ten.

Stanford, Cal Berkeley and SMU are not schools renowned for their football programs, so adding these schools won’t significantly boost viewership. Although it’s great to add new teams, Stanford and Cal have never played NC State in football before. For that reason, there is zero rivalry to start, and it’s almost impossible to artificially build one when teams are over 2000 miles apart.

These new additions stand to do very little to advance the conference in terms of revenue and viewership while also frustrating a lot of the current schools that bring in all the money in the first place. Florida State, Clemson and UNC were all adamant nays to the expansion, with the Seminoles being the most outspoken about the issue.

NC State originally voted no to the proposition, but Chancellor Randy Woodson was able to be convinced. After changing his vote and therefore the outcome, Woodson has refused to go in-depth on why he changed his mind.

At the end of the day, the ACC showed its hand a little too soon once the news of the Pac-12 dissolving made headlines. The ACC should have focused on making its current members happier by negotiating its grant of rights, but instead, its refusal to do so is creating more dissatisfaction.

Recently, the ACC has scrambled to make up new schedules multiple times for years to come and ended up changing them on a dime. Both teams and players are demanding more money than ever before in college athletics and eventually, the conferences will have to cave. 

The conferences are nothing without the teams that make them up, and adding three new teams just creates another wrinkle the ACC needs to iron out if it wants to stay around for the next couple of years, let alone the next seven.