atlantic coast conference

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is an American college athletic conference, affiliated with the NCAA's Division I, that was founded on May 8, 1953. The current member institutions are located in the mid- and south-Atlantic coastal states of Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Charter members of the ACC were Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina, and Wake Forest. In early December, 1953, officials convened in Greensboro and agreed to invite Virginia to the ACC. The seven charter members were aligned to the Southern Conference before formally withdrawing at the annual Spring Meeting on the morning of May 8, 1953. Prior to this meeting, a set a bylaws were drafted, but not ratified until June 14, 1953. In 1971, the ACC lost a member for the first and only time, The University of South Carolina, which now belongs to the Southeastern Conference. The ACC then operated with seven members until April 3, 1978 when Georgia Tech joined. On July 1, 1991, Florida State joined raising the total to nine. Once again the conference experience growth in 2004 with Miami and Virginia Tech joining on July 1. Boston College officially joins the ACC with the arrival of the 2005-2006 academic year.

Current members and year joined

* The ACC expanded from nine to 11 schools in 2004, with Miami and Virginia Tech joining from the Big East Conference. **Boston College joins in 2005, bringing the total to 12 schools.

Sports

Member schools participate in baseball, men's and women's basketball, field hockey, football, men's and women's golf, men's and women's lacrosse, women's rowing, men's and women's soccer, softball, men's and women's swimming, men's and women's tennis, indoor and outdoors track, cross country, women's volleyball, and wrestling. The ACC is often considered the best men's college basketball conference in the nation. For example, during February 2004, six teams were ranked in the top 25 at one time. One of the unranked teams, Maryland, was the National Champion in 2002 (and the ACC Champion in March 2004) and Clemson, who was ranked last in the ACC, had a strength of schedule ranked #1 in the country. The addition of Miami and Virginia Tech is expected to make the Atlantic Coast Conference more competitive in most sports, especially football; however, both schools' men's basketball programs, especially Virginia Tech's, are generally regarded as weaker than the rest of the ACC. For five weeks beginning on November 29, 2004, the ACC had a record-tying seven teams ranked in the AP men's basketball poll. The feat had been accomplished previously by the conference before in December 1997, and by the Big Ten in January 1999, but never for such a duration.

Divisional Layout

As of 2005, the ACC will begin divisional play in football. Both division leaders will compete in a playoff game at ALLTEL Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida to determine the ACC championship. This division structure leads to each team playing the following games:

Five games within its division (one against each opponent)
One game against a "permanent rival" from the other division
Two rotating games against teams in the other division

In the table below, the teams are listed in columns by division, and horizontally paired by permanent cross-divisional rivalry (not necessarily the school's closest traditional rival).

tlantic Division	Coastal Division
a href="/encyclopedia/Wake-Forest-University" title="Wake Forest University">Wake Forest	Duke
a href="/encyclopedia/Clemson-University" title="Clemson University">Clemson	Georgia Tech
a href="/encyclopedia/Florida-State-University" title="Florida State University">Florida State	Miami
a href="/encyclopedia/North-Carolina-State-University" title="North Carolina State University">N.C. State	North Carolina
a href="/encyclopedia/University-of-Maryland,-College-Park" title="University of Maryland, College Park">Maryland	Virginia
a href="/encyclopedia/Boston-College" title="Boston College">Boston College	Virginia Tech

Traditional rivalries in the ACC

As with most ACC traditions, the conference's classic rivalries began on the (men's) basketball court. Before the 2004 expansion, the ACC was able to maintain a full home-and-home double round-robin basketball schedule, meaning each team played each other team both at home and away each season. Coupled with the conference's geographic compactness (especially before Florida State joined in 1991), this enhanced conference cohesiveness and built a strong, interlocking web of rivalries, as each school could generally find something historical to be upset with each other school about. Some rivalries were, of course, stronger than others — notably those among the four "Tobacco Road" schools located in North Carolina. Lesser-known are the ACC's football rivalries. With the recent expansion, intra-state rivalries in Florida and Virginia that have always been more significant in football than basketball are now under the conference banner. This gives them added meaning, as these games will have more direct impact on postseason bowl game invitations. Some of the ACC's classic rivalries include:

Duke-North Carolina: basketball rivalry considered to be among the biggest in all of sports by many pundits and analysts
North Carolina-N.C. State
Virginia-North Carolina: football's "Oldest Rivalry in the South"
Virginia-Virginia Tech: football's Commonwealth Cup
Florida State-Miami: football's "Wide Right"
Duke-Maryland: basketball
Virginia-Maryland
N.C. State-Clemson: football's "Textile Bowl"
Virginia-Georgia Tech: football's "41-38"

Extra-conference rivalries involving ACC members include:

Clemson and South Carolina (of the SEC)
Georgia Tech and Georgia (SEC): written about in the book Clean, Old Fashioned Hate by Bill Cromartie, ISBN 1558531246
Florida State and Florida (SEC)
Virginia Tech and West Virginia (Big East)
Maryland and West Virginia (Big East)

In addition, Maryland has a long-held bitter rivalry in men's lacrosse with Johns Hopkins. The ACC is currently 6-0 in the annual ACC - Big Ten Challenge basketball tournament.