ACC Continues To Make No Sense At All, Will Open 2026 CFB Season In South America
What about this college football scheduling makes any sense?
College football is headed to South America. If that sentence isn’t unique enough for you, let’s try this one: North Carolina State and Virginia will kick off ACC play in 2026 in what will be the first-ever FBS game held on the continent.
If your immediate reaction is to ask why, you are certainly not alone. NC State and Virginia showcasing the Atlantic Athletic Conference in South America — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to be precise — makes about as much sense as, well, the actual conference itself.
While the ACC is mostly made up of schools located on the East Coast and at least somewhat close to the Atlantic Ocean, it is also home to Stanford, Cal and SMU.
The Wolfpack and Cavaliers are set to play on Aug. 29, 2026, at Nilton Santos Stadium, a venue that holds just under 45,000 people and hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics and Copa America.
The fine details of the matchup in Rio make the game even stranger.
In September, the ACC voted to move the league to a nine-game conference schedule beginning in 2026. NC State and Virginia were already set to play each other next season in what was deemed a non-conference game, but with the expanded conference schedule, this matchup then became a conference game.
So, just to recap: two ACC teams were slated to play each other, but the result wouldn’t count toward their conference record; then the conference needed an extra league game, so that non-conference in-conference game became an official conference game; and, oh yeah — they’re going to play it on a different continent.
The only part of this that makes any sense is that Brazil does share a border with the Atlantic Ocean, so technically, there is a tie to the ACC after all.