College Football

FAQ: ACC football's bowl game lineup for 2014 and beyond

The ACC has finalized its bowl lineup for 2014. Here's a handy set of frequently asked questions to try to ease some of the confusion.

By Peter Berkes Aug 7, 2013, 3:17pm EDT

With the College Football Playoff on the horizon, conferences are taking the opportunity to reshuffle their bowl lineups for when the system changes in 2014. On Wednesday, the ACC finalized its bowl lineup. Here are some frequently asked questions, in case you're confused about what's changed and what's new.

What will the ACC's new bowl game lineup look like?

1. Orange Bowl (vs. TBA)
2. Russell Athletic Bowl (vs. Big 12)
3. Capital One Bowl (vs. SEC)
4. Sun Bowl (vs. Pac-12)
5. Belk Bowl (vs. SEC)
6/7. Music City Bowl & Gator Bowl* (vs. SEC)
8. Pinstripe Bowl (vs. Big Ten)

Military Bowl (vs. AAC)
Advocare V100 Bowl (vs. ?)
Detroit Lions Bowl (vs. Big Ten)
Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl**
Birmingham Bowl**

As with other College Football Playoff semifinal bowls, the Orange Bowl will not host the ACC champion in years when it hosts a semifinal. The ACC champ will play in either the Fiesta or Chick-fil-A Bowl in those years. The bowls at the bottom are not numbered because the exact order isn't determined yet.

*The ACC will share the Music City and Gator Bowl berths with the Big Ten, with both conferences getting three spots in those games in a six year span.

**The Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl and Birmingham Bowl are both conditional bowl partners with the ACC. An ACC team will go to the Beef 'O' Brady's in 2014 and 2016, and provisionally after that if it has room, and the Birmingham Bowl will take an ACC team if there are enough bowl eligible teams and its primary conference partners can't fill their slots.

What's changed?

With the ACC expanding to 15 teams (counting Notre Dame as a kind-of-member), the conference needed to make sure it had room to accommodate everyone in seasons with a surplus of bowl-eligible teams. Besides the spillover bowls, the ACC added the Capital One, Gator and Pinstripe Bowls, and jettisoned the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl.

So where are all these games?

Florida: Miami (Orange), Orlando (Russell Athletic, Capital One), Jacksonville (Gator), Tampa (Beef 'O' Brady's)

Texas: El Paso (Sun)

Tennessee: Nashville (Music City)

New York: New York City (Pinstripe)

Louisiana: Shreveport (Advocare V100)

Washington, D.C. (Military)

Michigan: Detroit (Lions)

Alabama: Birmingham (Birmingham)

Any potential impact?

Not especially. The conference needed to add a couple more games to its bowl lineup to provide cover for its expanded roster of schools, and that's about it. The ACC may not recruit on the same level as the SEC, but it doesn't need to get into new bowl games to attract recruits.