The Big Ten and SEC have spent the last few years remaking the landscape of college football through their cold war, and Thursday brought the latest tectonic shift. The SEC, after staunchly defending its eight-game conference schedule amid College Football Playoff expansion talks, finally acquiesced to the Big Ten’s pressure and added a ninth conference matchup to the schedule for future seasons.
As with every battle between the sport’s two mega conferences, the ripple effects quickly broadside the ACC. The impact of Louisville is potentially twofold. First, it could threaten the long-term viability of the Cardinals’ annual in-state rivalry game, and second, the ACC is likely to follow suit, as Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports reported on Thursday.
If the SEC decides to move to a 9-game schedule, ACC leaders have said that they would likely follow suit - a move that puts all four power conferences at 9-game league schedules.
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) August 21, 2025
This may expedited discussions around future CFP formats.
There are too many potential television dollars to be had by adding another conference game to the inventory when leagues sell their rights, and though the ACC is locked into a long-term TV deal with ESPN, the conference is not going to be the lone Power 4 league with just an eight-game inventory to sell.
Furthermore, the discrepancy between conference schedules has been a significant sticking point in negotiations for CFP expansion and automatic bid allotments. Any deal that would be struck will almost certainly position the ACC and Big 12 as lesser than the Big Ten and SEC, but this brings all four leagues onto a more level playing field for negotiations.
ACC football schedule expansion could threaten the Governor’s Cup
As he stated at ACC Media Days, Jeff Brohm is not afraid of a difficult schedule. He welcomes the challenge of playing Power 4 opponents in out-of-conference games and has future matchups with Notre Dame on the books. Even with an additional ACC game added to the slate, Brohm would almost certainly continue to play the Wildcats in Week 14.
Kentucky, however, may not be so keen on the idea of a 10th power conference opponent. It’s an uphill battle for the Wildcats to reach bowl eligibility as it is, and as a basement-dwelling SEC football program, they will almost certainly be underdogs in the additional conference game.
The Governor’s Cup rivalry is scheduled out to 2030, but the expanded SEC schedule could throw a wrench in that agreement, and it’s not the only game that Louisville could lose. The Cardinals have future home-and-home matchups scheduled with Georgia and Texas A&M, which those programs could look to get out of with one less spot for a non-conference game on the schedule.