On Wednesday, the ACC unveiled a crafty schedule model of 10 league games and one non-conference foe that must be played in the home state of the ACC team involved.

The true purpose of the maneuver was to preserve the four traditional, season-ending rivalries from the SEC for Clemson (South Carolina), Florida State (Florida), Georgia Tech (Georgia) and Louisville (Kentucky).

For NC State, that meant that its most attractive option on the non-conference slate was still available: Mississippi State, already scheduled to come to Raleigh on Sept. 12, which was the ACC’s proposed starting weekend.

That is now off the table. The SEC has reportedly nixed any notions that the ACC’s plus-one option will involve one of their teams, as it will announce a 10-game SEC slate that will begin on Sept. 26.

So what’s next for NC State? Here are the options.

The Sept. 26 contest against Delaware was already not an option after the FCS-member’s Colonial Athletic Association postponed football this fall, hoping to try again in the spring. That leaves Troy and Liberty from the current non-conference set-up. The problem with Troy is that was supposed to be a road date on Sept. 19. NC State cannot leave the state for its non-conference game.

Theoretically, Troy could agree to a new arrangement and come to Raleigh, with the Pack perhaps making up the return trip later. The problem with that is it would be a long while before NC State can probably make that return. The earliest available spot would be 2026, and NC State already has a road game committed on that schedule in traveling to Vanderbilt. Generally, the Pack would prefer to limit road non-conference games to one in a given season. The first year with a road availability is all the way in 2032.

Thus the most realistic option among the current non-conference foes at this point is Liberty, who was scheduled to come to Raleigh on Nov. 21.

Can you name the last Power Five conference opponent outside independent/quasi ACC Notre Dame in 2016 to play a game at Carter-Finley Stadium? You have to go back to the 2009 season, when both South Carolina and Pittsburgh (then of the Big East, which was a BCS conference) came to Raleigh.

The 11-year gap should have been interrupted with a game against West Virginia in 2018, but that was canceled by Hurricane Florence. Now the Mississippi State contest in 2020 is off the book. Heck, even that Notre Dame game was played in Hurricane Matthew, leaving many Pack fans home. NC State fans have been deprived of a bigger-name opponent in ideal conditions for far too long.

It’s unlikely that NC State fans would get to see a game like that in person given the current conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, but could an effort be made to try to bring in a Power Five option? Options are severely limited. At this point, the Big 12 is the lone other conference that has not gone to a conference-only model, but the travel for some of the teams in that conference would be pretty lengthy.

However, could a team like West Virginia be interested? The Mountaineers never had that game in Raleigh, and WVU lost at least one opponent when its Sept. 19 contest against Maryland was canceled. It was also set to host Florida State in Atlanta on Sept. 5, another game that will not happen in that capacity.

Truth is, though, odds of a Power Five option coming to Raleigh are very slim at this point.

Appalachian State has had two games canceled already in its opener against Morgan State on Sept. 5 and at Wisconsin on Sept. 19. Would the Mountaineers be interested in coming to Raleigh to make up one of those contests? It also had a date at Wake Forest on Sept. 11 that could conceivably still happen. WFU AD John Currie said he has been in touch with his counterpart there.

Another in-state opponent in need of games if it is going to play is Charlotte, which has now lost games at Tennessee and vs. Norfolk State, and has a road date at Duke that is questionable.

Could NC State play East Carolina for the third straight year? The Pirates have also had two games now canceled: at South Carolina and home vs. Norfolk State.

There is always the potential that the whole plus-one setup was a simply a carrot thrown to the SEC to try to preserve some valuable rivalries, and with those options off the table it might not prove to be worth the effort to play a non-conference foe.

That would leave the ACC with a 10-game schedule, and it thus might be able to push the start of the season back one week further to add a little more time and cushion in case there is a potential outbreak of COVID-19 cases when students arrive back on campus in early-to-mid August.

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