Since I'm not a baseball fan, I've started thinking about football already.
Next year will be the third year the ACC has has the divisional alignment. The format is that every team plays the other 5 teams in their division, plus their one permanent cross division partner (for Duke that is Wake Forest), plus two rotating partners. For Duke, our rotating partners have been:
'05-06 - Florida State, Clemson
'06-07 - Florida State, Boston College
'07-08 - Florida State, Clemson
How is this a rotating schedule? We've played FSU 3 straight years (4 if you count the 11 team year of 2004), yet we haven't played NCSU since 2003? Does anyone know when FSU will ever drop off our schedule?
Other than that, next year's football schedule is just absolutely
brutal. We start off against UConn at home, then go on the road for a solid month. Homecoming is a thumping by VTech, followed the next week by a second road trip to Florida. Then we have two tough home games, and finish on the road at Notre Dame and at UNC. Seven road games to five at home against a slate that only has four teams who weren't bowl eligible last year (UNC, NW, UConn, and UVA). Even the games we traditionally look at as "potential" w's like Wake and Navy are no more. I think it's going to be very tough for Roof and the guys to do anything against this schedule. I would consider anything over 1-2 wins to be a miracle.
Personally, I'd rather drop Navy and add a semi-winnable game like ECU early in the season to pump some confidence into the schedule, and switch FSU out for State. That would give us two more winnable games at least.