By Will Vandervort.

By Will Vandervort

CLEMSON — Okay, maybe the timing of the news was not the best in the world Wednesday, but Clemson’s athletic department could not be any happier when learning the Atlantic Coast Conference has decided to go back to an eight-game conference schedule in football.

With the addition of Notre Dame playing five games annually against ACC teams, the league has determined it will play an eight-game conference schedule for 2013 and beyond. Divisions, primary crossover partners and rotating opponents from the opposite division will remain consistent to what was previously announced.

“It’s awesome news,” said Associate Athletic Director Kyle Young, who is in charge of scheduling. “This is great news for us. It would have been better news maybe last month, but nonetheless it is great news for Clemson and the way we schedule our football games in the future.”

The ACC decided last February it was going to go to a nine-game conference schedule starting in 2013, which Clemson was strongly opposed to. Clemson administration, led by Young, worked diligently with conference officials to get the nine-game schedule back on the table for vote, but it was shot down by the league’s athletic directors several times.

When news broke about Notre Dame joining the conference as a partial member last month, and the Irish playing five ACC games a year in football—which could start as early as 2014—schools such as Florida State and others finally saw the concern Clemson had all along. They saw scheduling out of conference home games was getting increasingly difficult, especially if it is counting on seven home games a year like Clemson does.

“Notre Dame to the ACC played a huge part in this getting changed,” Young said.  “Before, other schools seemed okay with the nine-game schedule for whatever the reason and it was not that big of an issue for them like it was for us, but when Notre Dame joined, now it affected everybody in the league.”

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney liked hearing the news when he came off the practice fields Wednesday night.

“With Notre Dame coming (into the league) and being able to keep our home schedule intact and keep the right amount of home games was, obviously, important,” Swinney said. “And it’s not just important to the university, but to the community. There are a lot of people that thrive off of those home games so I’m really happy to hear that.”

With the ACC now back to eight league games, Clemson has the flexibility to schedule whoever it would like and can still host a seventh home game.

“It gives us a lot of flexibility, which we will need,” Young said. “It is getting increasingly difficult to schedule guaranteed games with mid-major programs in the future. They are not playing guaranteed games anymore. They want a deal. They want to see you come to their place as well.”

Right now, Clemson can’t look to far into the future because it now has to find games it dropped with Kent State, Central Michigan, Oklahoma State and Ole Miss after the ACC announced  its’ nine-game schedule plan.

Clemson dropped Kent State (2013) and Central Michigan (2014) the next two years, but Young says they will quickly start to look at other schools that can maybe replace those two on the schedules. Kent State is expected to be back on the schedule in 2017.

“We are going to be okay, we will find someone to replace those games,” he said. “The good news is, we will be able to and we will be able to have seven home games a year from now on.”

One of the teams Clemson is looking to add on the schedule more often is Georgia, who Young says has expressed interest in playing Clemson a lot more frequently after the 2013 and 2014 games. Clemson would also like to continue playing Auburn and any other big-name school that is located in the Southeast footprint of the country.

“I would love to play in our geographical footprint,” Young said. “That’s what I like about this. It opens up to our philosophy a little bit and gives us some wiggle room so we can do some things. We can now maybe schedule Auburn again. The last three years, all of those games have been exciting and it was fun for us and for our fans to be playing in those kinds of game.

“We can also play in the Chick-fil-A Classic in Atlanta, again. That’s now back on the table. It allows us to do so many things. It is just exciting I think when I think about all the possibilities.”

And included in all of that excitement is a home-and-home series with Notre Dame every six years.

“Now I feel a whole lot better that Notre Dame is tied to the ACC. This is a huge partnership,” Young said.