ACC football schedule release officially nixes Notre Dame-Navy game

Notre Dame will open its season as an Atlantic Coast Conference football member against visiting Duke on Sept. 12 and won't face Navy for the first time in more than nine decades as part of the ACC's reconfigured schedule due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The ACC released the schedule Thursday, a little more than a week after it announced plans for a 10-game league slate plus one nonconference game and its championship game played either Dec. 12 or 19. Just as noteworthy was that the plan included the Fighting Irish, who are giving up their coveted football independence and competing for the ACC title this season.

The nonconference games are required to be played in the member school's home state, and opponents must meet ACC medical protocol requirements that include regular testing for athletes, coaches and staff to try to control the potential spread of coronavirus.

That report from the ACC's medical advisory group also recommends schools evaluate travel policies for games, including modes of transportation such as buses or flights, lodging accommodations and the size of the travel party. That comes as the 15 teams travel within an ACC footprint spanning nearly the entire Atlantic Seaboard from Massachusetts to Florida and moving west into Kentucky and Indiana.

Games within 250 miles of a member school are considered reasonable for bus travel, but teams typically take charter flights when needed, according to information the league provided by email to The Associated Press. The ACC "maxed out" on 17 scheduling opportunities to pair league schools within 250 miles of each other, while the decision on whether to travel by bus or plane beyond that distance is left to the member schools.

Until Thursday, league teams had been holding offseason workouts or starting preseason practices without knowing for sure whom they would play or where in roughly a month.

"I figured we were going to play, we just didn't know the who, when and where," said Georgia Tech linebacker David Curry, whose Yellow Jackets open at Florida State on Sept. 12, a week before hosting their nonconference game against Central Florida - the most notable such matchup across the ACC this season.

As for Notre Dame, the Irish and Navy were originally scheduled to play for the 94th straight season, this time in Dublin, Ireland. The pandemic forced the relocation to the Midshipmen's home field in Annapolis, Maryland, for the first time in the history of the series on Sept. 5, along with the cancellation of Notre Dame's games against Wisconsin, Stanford and Southern California as the Big Ten and Pac-12 went to league-only schedules.

Now Notre Dame's lone nonconference game will be a previously scheduled visit from Western Michigan on Sept. 19. Navy announced Thursday it would replace Notre Dame with BYU this season, along with an agreement to extend the Notre Dame series contract to 2032.

Notre Dame, a full member in all other league sports, already had a scheduling agreement to annually play five or six games with ACC teams as an independent. The Irish were set to play five-time reigning ACC champion Clemson, plus Duke, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Pittsburgh and Wake Forest this year.

Notre Dame's marquee matchup at home with Clemson - coach Dabo Swinney's Tigers are No. 1 in the preseason coaches poll released Thursday - remains in its originally scheduled Nov. 7 slot, while the Irish added ACC matchups with Boston College, Florida State, Syracuse and North Carolina, with that game against the Tar Heels coming on the road the day after Thanksgiving.

The ACC's home-state requirement for nonconference games nixed three notable opening matchups in Atlanta - North Carolina-Auburn, Virginia-Georgia and Florida State-West Virginia were set as Chick-fil-A Kickoff Games at Mercedes-Benz Stadium - but created a path to save traditional rivalries with Southeastern Conference schools such as Georgia Tech-Georgia, Florida State-Florida, Clemson-South Carolina and Louisville-Kentucky.

However, the SEC went to a league-only schedule a day later, eliminating those games, too.

The first two games of the ACC season are nonconference contests: Miami hosts the University of Alabama at Birmingham the night of Thursday, Sept. 10, followed by Virginia welcoming Virginia Military Institute a day later.

Three teams - North Carolina State, Syracuse and Virginia Tech - will host Liberty as a nonconference foe. Nine teams kept one of their previously scheduled nonconference opponents at the originally planned venue, while Wake Forest flipped a season-opening trip to Old Dominion into an Oct. 9 home game with the Monarchs of Conference USA.

Clemson and North Carolina have yet to announce a nonconference opponent, but both of those games are set for Sept. 19.

"Even when they said who we were going to play (last week), it still doesn't have a life to them until they get a date for each game," Tar Heels coach Mack Brown said after Thursday's practice. "So I think it kind of came to reality today that, 'Hey, we may actually play, this is important, we better go to work.'"