Oct 10, 2020; Syracuse, New York, USA; General view of a football on top of an end zone marker with the Atlantic Coast Conference logo displayed prior to the game against the Duke Blue Devils and the Syracuse Orange at the Carrier Dome. Mandatory Credit: Rich Barnes-USA TODAY Sports

It finally happened. The Atlantic Coast Conference has approved a change to a nine-game conference football schedule, as reported by Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports. The move is significant on its own terms and would rate as a big story without any added context. However, it rates as especially important news for one obvious reason.

For years, the Pac-10 (before it became the Pac-12) and the Big 12 played nine-game conference schedules, while other power conferences played only eight games. This was a huge sore spot and source of frustration in the college football world. Then the Big Ten moved to nine games, which meant that three of the Power Five conferences had nine games, a majority. This left the SEC and ACC as the minority group holding into eight in an imbalanced context.

This division in college football lasted for many years, long enough to witness the demise of the Pac-12, at least in its familiar and long-existing incarnation. The Pac-12 technically still exists, but in a hollowed-out and reduced form which is reflective of a Group of Five league, not a power conference. We live in a Power Four world now, and we also live in a 12-team College Football Playoff era with teams being able to make the playoff at 10-2 instead of 11-1, which was almost always a requirement in the four-team playoff era. This is what partly opened the door for the SEC to rethink nine games, in addition to its 16-team configuration. The expanded 16-team SEC caused ESPN to put pressure on the conference to expand its schedule to create more television inventory.

With the SEC adopting nine league games, three of the Power Four leagues had nine-game schedules, so the ACC was the only holdout. Now it isn't, and there is uniformity across all the power conferences in college football. It's a day many college football watchers were hoping to see but didn't think would happen this soon.

There is one interesting twist, though, to this nine-game schedule for the ACC: Not all 17 teams will play nine league games every year. One of the 17 will play eight. That's simple math in a league with an odd number of teams. Nevertheless, all Power Four conferences are on the same page and are all playing nine league games instead of eight. It's a big day for college football, also a time for Group of Five and FCS programs to be concerned, given that the amount of paycheck games they can play against the Power Fours has now been reduced even more. This will be a point of discussion among smaller football schools. How they plan to address this change is an intriguing unknown element of college football's future.

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This article originally appeared on College Sports Wire: ACC adopts nine-game conference football schedule, joins other Power Four leagues

Reporting by Matt Zemek, College Sports Wire / College Sports Wire

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