What If Scheduling Rules ARE Changed?

Let's assume for a moment that the ACC's proposal - to give conferences autonomy as far as how to schedule internally and how to select teams for the conference football championship - passes (and all indications so are are that it will pass). How would that affect regular season schedules for the Hokies?

There are literally an almost unlimited number of ways to create a scheduling model if you loosen up the current NCAA requirement that each team must play every other team in its own division annually. Without those handcuffs, the sky is the limit. So to keep this article within a reasonable length, I've made some simplifying assumptions here:

• the Atlantic and Coastal divisions are not going away
• the current cross-over rivals are also etched in stone
• each team would have 2 more annual rivals from its own division
• each team would play a total of 4 teams per year from each division, thus allowing them to play all 14 teams twice in a 4-year cycle.

Using those assumptions, and keeping the most important rivalries within divisions (e.g. all of the "year end" rivalries), I came up with the following rivals for VT:

• cross-over: Boston College
• division rival #1: Virginia
• division rival #2: Miami
• Rotating Coastal Division teams, years 1 and 2: UNC, Ga Tech
• Rotating Coastal Division teams, years 1 and 2: Duke, Pittsburgh
• Rotating Atlantic Division teams, years 1 and 2: Wake Forest, Syracuse, Florida State
• Rotating Coastal Division teams, years 1 and 2: Clemson, Louisville, NC State

Let's say those end up being the teams, and that this goes into effect in 2015.... what might the schedule look like?

What do you think? Do you like that better than the current schedule, or not as well?

(if you want to see the schedules for the other 13 teams, click here).