Okay, so, I’ve been digging into this whole college football bowl game thing, specifically which bowls the ACC participates in. It’s a bit of a maze, honestly, but I wanted to get to the bottom of it and I finally have a good handle of it, I think.
So, I started by trying to figure out how many bowl games there even are in total. Turns out, there are 47 total bowl games in the 2024-25 college football season. That’s a lot of games! This includes all those College Football Playoff games, like the first-round games, the quarterfinals, semifinals, and then, of course, the big national championship game.
Then, I dove into the ACC’s involvement. I learned that the ACC has 11 teams playing in bowl games this season! That’s a pretty big deal. I also found out that through the first 11 of the conference’s 13 bowl game appearances, only two teams have emerged victorious: Louisville and Syracuse. Every other ACC team has fallen short in their bowl games, with Duke and Virginia Tech still yet to play.
Historically, I found that bowl games and who gets to play in them are decided by a bunch of stuff like whether a team is even eligible, their rankings, what conference they’re in, and even stuff like where they’re located, how good they are in school, or if they have any long-standing rivalries. Usually, a team has to have a winning record, like at least seven wins, to even be considered for a bowl game.
I also made a list of the current members of the ACC. We’ve got: Boston College, Clemson University, Florida State, University of Louisville, North Carolina State, University of Notre Dame, Syracuse, Wake Forest, Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Pittsburgh, and Virginia.
I read that former Pac-12 teams, including Cal and Stanford, are going to be eligible for the Pac-12’s usual non-CFP bowl games, as long as they don’t get picked for the College Football Playoff.
There’s also news about seven ACC teams playing between December 26-28. And the Washington Huskies and the Louisville Cardinals are supposed to face off in the Sun Bowl on December 31, 2024.
Overall, I saw that ACC teams are going to be playing 22 games that are going to be shown on ABC and ESPN. That’s a ton of airtime!
So yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to – trying to make sense of the ACC’s bowl game situation. It’s a lot to keep track of, but it’s been a pretty fun deep dive. I will share the list of the ACC bowl games.
- Team 1: Syracuse
- Team 2: Boston College
- Team 3: Clemson University
- Team 4: Florida State
- Team 5: University of Louisville
- Team 6: North Carolina State
- Team 7: University of Notre Dame
- Team 8: Wake Forest
- Team 9: Duke
- Team 10: Georgia Tech
- Team 11: Miami
I have made a note and will share it later to remember each team’s opponents. I hope this helps anyone else who’s been trying to follow along!
