ACC Announces 12-Year Agreement With The Orange Bowl

Hot on the heels of the news that a four-team playoff system will be in place for the 2014-15 academic season in college football, the ACC has reached an agreement with the Orange Bowl for the next 12 years, according to Mark Gianotto of the Washington Post. The assumption is that the game will rotate as one of semifinal bowl games to decide who plays in the National Championship game.

The ACC should benefit quite a bit from this deal. If an ACC team reaches the national semifinals and the Orange Bowl is not one of the games in the national semifinals, a replacement ACC team will take the conference champion's place. If the ACC champion doesn't reach the national semifinals and the Orange Bowl is in the rotation, the conference champion will still be in a BCS bowl game.

The game has also officially set its time spot to be New Year's Day at 1 p.m. This should work in the favor of fans who would not want to miss time to see their team play in the Orange Bowl. For example, when the Virginia Tech Hokies faced the Stanford Cardinal in the Orange Bowl two years ago, Virginia Tech sold only 6.500 of their 17,500 ticket allotment. Even worse was when they face the Cincinnati Bearcats in 2009, when they only sold 3,300 tickets.