ACC Football keeping title game in Charlotte was only option

The ACC will be keeping their biggest game of the season in the same city for at least another 13 seasons – and there was really no other option.

On December 1st of this year, the ACC will crown their 14th champion of the annual conference title game – a tradition that dates all the way back to raiding the former Big East conference and breaking off into two divisions before the 2005 season. Since then, five different teams – including FSU football – have been crowned champs with seven of the last eight games taking place in Charlotte.

It appears that, barring another move over a controversial law in the state of North Carolina like what took place in 2016, the Queen City will be hosting the title game for decades to come. The ACC on Thursday announced an extension on their deal with the city and Bank of America Stadium, keeping the game there at least through the 2030 season.

It’s a move that continues the trend of keeping everything confined close to the league’s headquarters in the state (aside from the two year basketball experiment in Brooklyn) and reminds the state of Florida that they will not forget how bad things turned out the first five years of the game being played in the Sunshine State.

In reality, the idea of putting the game in Florida to start was because the league expected the Florida State Seminoles and rival Miami Hurricanes to be playing in the game almost every year. The teams combined for just one appearance (FSU in the inaugural 2005 game) during the five year stretch of games in Jacksonville and Tampa.

Heck, the only reason the 2016 game was moved to Orlando (after North Carolina refused to get rid of their transgender bathroom ban law that was later reversed) was because it was the only option – and it was saved in attendance by the fact Clemson was a top team nationally…which allowed ACC officials to forget about no one showing up when Georgia Tech played Wake Forest or Virginia Tech stomped Boston College two years in a row.

In reality, the ACC didn’t have any other non-Florida option when it came where it could play the game. With the league’s footprint only going north, your options for playing a December championship game seemed to be places like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. or New York City – and it gets cold enough in Charlotte at that time so you don’t want to make it worse.

The real options in the Southeast would have been Atlanta – which is locked into the SEC Championship Game for another quarter century – or a place like Nashville or New Orleans, which have no ties to the conference. All that math added up to Charlotte being the only real option for the ACC.

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Trust me, I would love for the game to be played in the Sunshine State so when FSU gets back in it we have the home state advantage. But, despite us bringing the fans for that inaugural game in Jacksonville, it appears we’ll have to get used to the Tar Heel State in the beginning of December for a while.