Wake Forest Athletics
GOLD RUSH: Ron Wellman Column
3/30/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of Gold Rush.
Football scheduling has been in the news recently. Wake Forest has agreed to play a non-conference football series with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2019 (home) and 2021 (away). Yes, a NON-conference series with an ACC rival. To our knowledge this is the first time conference foes from any conference have agreed to play a non-conference series. Between now and 2024, we are only scheduled to play UNC in conference games in 2015 and 2022, but both schools felt that this is an important rivalry that should continue even if the games will not be counted in the ACC standings. The overwhelming feedback from Wake Foresters has been extremely positive, as they want to play UNC as often as possible.
The ACC athletic directors have agreed that each ACC school will play a football non-conference opponent from the SEC, Big 10, PAC 12, Big 12 or Notre Dame or BYU annually. We have agreed to a series with Indiana, Purdue, Mississippi and Vanderbilt in the future. Our other three non-conference opponents will typically include a FCS school and two FBS (Army, Tulane, Utah State, Appalachian State, Rice, Old Dominion, Northern Illinois, Air Force) opponents each year.
Ideally, we would like to play seven home football games each season. We have succeeded in scheduling seven home games in 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2020. However, achieving our goal of playing seven home games each season is becoming more challenging in today's economic environment. The financial guarantees that non-conference opponents are receiving today for "buy games" have doubled and tripled from just a few years ago. Therefore, it is more realistic to play a home- and- away series against quality opponents than to "buy" one-time games.
Our tentative future non-conference schedules are:
2016: Tulane (H), Delaware (H), Army (H), Indiana (A)
2017: Presbyterian (H), Utah State (H), Appalachian State (A), Notre Dame (A)
2018: Liberty (H), Rice (H), Notre Dame (H), Tulane (A)
2019: Utah State (H), UNC (H), Elon (H), Rice (A)
2020: Tulane (H), Appalachian State (H), Notre Dame (H), Old Dominion (A)
2021: Old Dominion (H), Northern Illinois (H), UNC (A), Army (A)
2022: Air Force (H), Army (H), Vanderbilt (A)
2023: Vanderbilt (H), Notre Dame (A)
2024: Ole Miss (H), Army (A)
2025: Army (H), Ole Miss (A)
2026: Purdue (A), Army (A)
2027: Purdue (H)
Finally, this year's schedule includes a Friday night game on Oct. 30 vs. Louisville. This is the first time we have played a home Friday night game. When the ACC signed our ESPN contract, the conference agreed to play 4 percent of our games on Thursdays, Fridays or Labor Day Monday. We would much rather play a Friday night game on the road at one of the northern ACC schools who do not have the same high school football conflicts that we do because their high school games are typically played on Saturdays, but nevertheless, all ACC schools have agreed to the terms of our contract with ESPN, so all ACC institutions must accept playing a Friday night home game if the conference makes such a request.
Sept. 3, which is the date of our first football game vs. Elon, is less than six months away. I look forward to seeing you at BB&T Field!
Go Deacs!
