ACC Football reportedly could partner with California bowl game in 2020

ACC football could be moving some of their bowl tie ins around according to one report – a move that would include sending one team to San Diego.

In the period of just under a decade and a half, ACC football has gone from a group of schools in the southeast to a conference that includes 14 teams (since Notre Dame is too chicken to join full time) and spans literally the entire eastern seaboard – all while expanding their television brand across the country with the new ACC Network this fall.

As part of that effort to make people from Tallahassee to Tacoma know about everything from the Seminoles to the Cavaliers and more, the conference could reportedly be preparing to move one of their bowl tie ins not just out of the Southeast – but completely to the other side of the United States.

According to Stadium’s Brett McMurphy, ACC football will reportedly send a conference member to the Holiday Bowl in San Diego starting with the bowl games after the 2020 regular season – a move that will be announced later this year as part of the next group of tie ins that will span for six seasons.

"With the Big Ten playing in Las Vegas and Belk (bowls), the Big Ten will not be affiliated with the Holiday Bowl after 2019 and will be replaced by the ACC. The San Diego-based bowl will feature the Pac-12 against the ACC from 2020-25."

ACC Football has never had a conference member play in the game, which started following the 1978 regular season. The move would be a part of several changes, which McMurphy says would also include the ACC playing the SEC every season in the Gator Bowl while also playing the SEC in the Outback Bowl during seasons in which that bowl’s Big Ten tie in goes to the Orange Bowl.

In their history, FSU football has played in San Diego twice as they lost to San Diego State in both 1973 and 1977 in games played inside the stadium where the bowl game is played each season.

Those games against the Aztecs were the first two that the Seminoles played inside the state of California. In 1991, the Noles faced BYU in Anaheim while playing at USC six seasons later. In 2006, FSU football played UCLA in a bowl game in San Francisco while taking Auburn in 2013 and Oregon the following season in games played inside the famed Rose Bowl stadium.