The Atlantic Coast Conference

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 from Wikipedia (January 8, 2026)

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, the ACC's eighteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s Division I. ACC football teams compete in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. The ACC sponsors competition in twenty-eight sports with many of its member institutions held in high regard nationally. Current members of the conference are Boston College, California, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, North Carolina, NC State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, SMU, Stanford, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest.  Notre Dame plays typically 4-5 football contess within the conference but is a I-A Independent and not a full member of the ACC for football.

ACC teams and athletes have claimed dozens of national championships in multiple sports throughout the conference's history. Generally, the ACC's top athletes and teams in any particular sport in a given year are considered to be among the top collegiate competitors in the nation. Additionally, the conference enjoys extensive media coverage. With the advent of the College Football Playoff in 2014, the ACC is one of the "Power Four" conferences who had contractual tie-in to a New Year's Six bowl game in the sport of football prior to the playoffs being expanded in 2024.

The ACC was founded on May 8, 1953, by seven universities located in the South Atlantic states, with the University of Virginia joining in early December 1953 to bring the membership to eight.[2] The loss of the University of South Carolina in 1971 dropped membership to seven, but the addition of Georgia Tech in 1979 for non-football sports and 1983 for football brought it back to eight, and Florida State's arrival in 1991 for non-football sports and 1992 for football increased the membership to nine. Since 2000, with the widespread reorganization of the NCAA, ten additional schools have joined, and one original member (Maryland) has left to bring it to the current membership of 18 schools. The additions in recent years extended the conference's footprint into the Northeast, Midwest, and West.