2012 ACC football schedule released

 The ACC released the 2012 ACC football schedule Monday: 


 2012 ACC football schedule


Friday, Aug. 31
Tennessee vs. N.C. State, Chick-fil-A Kickoff, Georgia Dome, Atlanta, Ga.

Saturday, Sept. 1
 Auburn vs. Clemson,Chick-fil-A Kickoff, Georgia Dome, Atlanta, Ga.
Miami at Boston College
Florida International at Duke
Murray State at Florida State
William & Mary at Maryland
Elon at North Carolina
Richmond at Virginia
Liberty at Wake Forest

Monday, Sept. 3
Georgia Tech at Virginia Tech, ESPN, 8 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 8
Maine at Boston College
Ball State at Clemson
Duke at Stanford
Savannah State at Florida State
Presbyterian at Georgia Tech
Maryland at Temple
Miami at Kansas State
North Carolina at Wake Forest
N.C. State at Connecticut
Penn State at Virginia
Austin Peay at Virginia Tech

Saturday, Sept. 15
Boston College at Northwestern
Furman at Clemson
N.C. Central at Duke
Wake Forest at Florida State
Virginia at Georgia Tech
Connecticut at Maryland
Bethune-Cookman at Miami
North Carolina at Louisville
South Alabama at N.C. State
Virginia Tech at Pittsburgh

Saturday, Sept. 22
Memphis at Duke
Clemson at Florida State
Miami at Georgia Tech
Maryland at West Virginia
East Carolina at North Carolina
The Citadel at N.C. State
Virginia at TCU
Bowling Green at Virginia Tech
Army at Wake Forest

Saturday, Sept. 29
Clemson at Boston College
Duke at Wake Forest
N.C. State at Miami
Florida State at South Florida
Middle Tennessee at Georgia Tech
Idaho at North Carolina
Louisiana Tech at Virginia
Virginia Tech at Cincinnati, FedEx Field, Landover, Md.

Saturday, Oct. 6
Miami at Notre Dame, Soldier Field, Chicago, Ill.
Boston College at Army
Georgia Tech at Clemson
Virginia at Duke
Florida State at N.C. State
Wake Forest at Maryland
Virginia Tech at North Carolina

Saturday, Oct. 13
Boston College at Florida State
Duke at Virginia Tech
Maryland at Virginia
North Carolina at Miami

Saturday, Oct. 20
Boston College at Georgia Tech
Virginia Tech at Clemson
North Carolina at Duke
Florida State at Miami
NC State at Maryland
Wake Forest at Virginia

Thursday, Oct. 25
Clemson at Wake Forest, ESPN

Saturday, Oct. 27
BYU at Georgia Tech
Maryland at Boston College
Duke at Florida State
N.C. State at North Carolina

Thursday, Nov. 1
Virginia Tech at Miami, ESPN

Saturday, Nov. 3
Boston College at Wake Forest
Clemson at Duke
Georgia Tech at Maryland
Virginia at N.C. State

Thursday, November 8
Florida State at Virginia Tech, ESPN

Saturday, Nov. 10
Notre Dame at Boston College
Maryland at Clemson
Georgia Tech at North Carolina
Miami at Virginia
Wake Forest at N.C. State

Thursday, Nov. 15
North Carolina at Virginia, ESPN

Saturday, Nov. 17
South Florida at Miami
Virginia Tech at Boston College
N.C. State at Clemson
Duke at Georgia Tech
Florida State at Maryland
Wake Forest at Notre Dame

Saturday, Nov. 24
Boston College at N.C. State
South Carolina at Clemson
Miami at Duke
Florida at Florida State
Georgia Tech at Georgia
Maryland at North Carolina
Virginia at Virginia Tech
Vanderbilt at Wake Forest

Saturday, December 1 
Dr Pepper ACC Championship Game, Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte

NCAA follows NFL lead on kickoffs

INDIANAPOLIS - Kickoffs in major college football will move from the 30 to the 35-yard line next season, a change intended to keep players safer.

The change was approved this week by the NCAA playing rules oversight panel, which also said the running start by players on the kicking team will be limited to 5 yards.

The NFL moved up kickoffs 5 yards this past season and touchbacks increased dramatically. Another new NCAA rule involving free kicks will move touchbacks from the 20 to the 25-yard line, a move intended to encourage more touchbacks.

The panel also approved a rule that will require a player who loses his helmet during a play to leave the game for one play. There are also new guidelines regarding blocking below the waist and blocking on punt returns. Players will also be prohibited from leaping over blockers when trying to block punts.

- Associated Press

• NCAA rules changes

Wake Forest hires 2 football assistants

WINSTON-SALEM - Wake Forest has added two assistants to its football staff.

Coach Jim Grobe said Friday that Jonathan Himebauch will coach the offensive line and Derrick Jackson will be in charge of the defensive line.

Himebauch had coached in the Canadian Football League since 2009 and was hired as the Toronto Argonauts' offensive coordinator two months ago.

Jackson spent last season coaching the defensive line at Rice.

Their hirings were announced roughly a month after the school said special teams coordinator Keith Henry and co-defensive coordinator Tim Billings would not return.

- Observer news services

UNC coach Larry Fedora calls negative recruiting comical

CHAPEL HILL — It’s always difficult for a new college football coaching staff to recruit. Since most coaching transitions in college football happen in December or early January, a head coach and his staff might unite with about a month left before national signing day.

That’s how it was at North Carolina, where Larry Fedora was introduced as the Tar Heels new head coach in mid-December. He started later that month, and announced his staff in early January. Then it was time to recruit. The task would have been difficult enough.

It was even more so, though, because the NCAA is still deciding on what penalties UNC will face in the wake of the football program’s impermissible benefits and academic fraud scandals that erupted in 2010. UNC appeared before the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions in late October.

Here in early February, there’s still no word on what kind of penalties UNC will face. Will it be an extended probation and the loss of more scholarships? Could it be something more serious – like a postseason ban? No one knows. And that unknown was one of the most difficult things to overcome for UNC on the recruiting trail.

“Well the toughest thing is the unknown, you know,” Fedora said Wednesday, after the Tar Heels signed a 23-man recruiting class. “Because as you’re talking to kids, other schools are obviously talking about what’s going on with the NCAA situation. And so the unknown was the hardest thing to defend.

“Because basically they could make up anything they wanted. And if you’re an 18-year-old kid, or a 17-year-old kid, you don’t know what to believe. Especially when you’ve just met this group of coaches and you don’t really, truly have a relationship with them.

“So for us, it was just be as honest as we could, tell them what we know and then let a kid make his own decision.”

It was at that point in Fedora’s press conference when I asked whether he was familiar with what other schools told prospects that UNC recruited.

“Oh, yeah – sure do,” Fedora said. “Because once you get that relationship with that kid, he starts telling you, guess what they said this time. And so, yeah, a lot of it’s comical to be honest with you. What they will tell a kid.”

Fedora declined to share the specifics of what rival coaches might have told prospects about what penalties UNC might face. It’s not too difficult to imagine. Certainly the prospect of a bowl ban would have been raised. Probably the prospect of a multi-year bowl ban was used against the Tar Heels.

Massive scholarship cuts, which would affect UNC’s ability to be competitive.

Fedora said he and his staff had to deal with other aspects of negative recruiting, too. Some schools, he said, told prospects that Fedora wouldn’t actually install his up-tempo spread offense at UNC. Instead, those other schools said, the Tar Heels would run the same type of traditional pro-style offense that’s been the norm in Chapel Hill since, well … a long time.

“There were schools that were actually out there saying, hey, they’re not going to run that offense,” Fedora said. “They’re going to run what they’ve always run here at North Carolina. Which I found very comical. So it was – that’s just the way it is in recruiting.”

That is indeed just the way it is in recruiting, where opposing coaches – like politicians – look for the slightest weakness in one another, and then try to exploit it. The problem for UNC in this case, though, is that it couldn’t very well respond to what other schools said about the specter of NCAA sanctions.

Fedora and his staff hoped to have some time to recruit after the verdict came down but it remained an unknown, all the way to national signing day.