LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — This is how many times the University of Louisville has played Stanford in football:

Zero.

This is how many times the Cardinals have played the California Bears:

Zero.

This is how many times U of L has played SMU in football:

Not zero.

The answer is 2.

Zero is how many times that Louisville has defeated SMU, losing back to back games to the Mustangs during their pre-Death Penalty days in the mid-80s.

The next blast of ACC expansion will not affect Louisville’s schedule during Rivalry Week.

The drumbeat keeps growing that ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and his allies are gaining momentum in their push to grab one more vote and convince either North Carolina, North Carolina State, Clemson or Florida State to join the ACC members eager, ready and willing to add Stanford, California and SMU to the league that made its reputation on Tobacco Road.

If Phillips gets that vote, the ACC will grow from 15 to 18 teams, except in football where it will be a 17-team extravaganza with Notre Dame permitted to talk the talk of being an ACC member without actually committing to playing a complete ACC schedule. (Google Jack Swarbrick for details.)

But that’s another column.

This column is about my thoughts on the ACC adding two schools from California and another from Texas to a league with its heart and soul stuck in North Carolina.

My first reaction is no reaction or overreaction. Do it. Get it over with. Then prepare to do it again next summer. You know we will.

There’s no reason to hyperventilate. This will be at least the fifth time the ACC has shuffled its membership in the last 20 years. There were people hyperventilating when the ACC welcomed Louisville into the group for 2014.

Everybody survived.

I remember when Miami and Virginia Tech roared from the Big East into the ACC in 2004. Along with Florida State, those were the programs that were going to make the ACC a force in college football, a league that could go toe-to-toe with the Southeastern Conference.

They have not — and the inability of the Hurricanes, Hokies and other ACC members to remain constants on the national scene belongs high on the list of reasons the ACC is perpetually stuck in third-and-long in its battles with the SEC and Big Ten for media rights money.

Heck, the ACC expanded seven months later during the year (1953) it was born. The original seven schools added Virginia later that year. Tony Bennett is thankful for that.


There were the four North Carolina schools (North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke, Wake Forest), two South Carolina schools (South Carolina and Clemson), Virginia and Maryland.

Four states. One time zone. The longest trip was 541 miles from College Park, Maryland to Clemson, S.C.

Most league members could complete road trips with bus rides of five hours or less.

Get this: Fans could make spur of the moment decisions to attend road games.

If SMU, California and Stanford join the party, the ACC travel junket will remind you of the NFL, NBA, MLB or Big Ten.

Make that 12 states. Three times zones (sorry, Mountain time zone people. Is Colorado State available?).

The longest ACC trip will be 3,085.1 miles from Boston, Mass., to Berkeley, Calif., which is surprisingly an extra 50 miles beyond the trip from Miami to California.

What would the new travel numbers be for the University of Louisville?

Guess who ran them?

The shortest trips will remain the drives to Notre Dame (255 miles); Blacksburg, Va. (384 miles) and Pittsburgh (387 miles).

The longest trips? More than 2,300 miles to Stanford and Cal.

Ten of the 17 ACC campuses will be 500 or more miles from Louisville.

5-0-0.

The average distance to the other schools will be 787 miles. The median distance will be the 542-mile journey from Louisville to Durham and Duke.

Football will charter.

Men's and women’s basketball will (likely) charter.

Everybody else will have a staff member log into Expedia or Kayak.

Breeze Airways is the only airline that flies direct from Muhammad Ali International to San Francisco — two days a week.

I’ll advise the ACC scheduling department that starting in September those direct flights will switch to every Wednesday and Saturday.

Otherwise, expect a connection or two, along with travel time ranging from 7.5 to a dozen hours (winter flight delays included at no extra charge).

Like I said, no reason to hyperventilate. Consider it a festival of frequent flier miles.

And merely a temporary spasm of reality — until all the conferences realign again.

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