And thanks to the second Thursday night game, [M]the Wolfpack will face a short turnaround[/M] between the Louisville and Georgia Tech games, which is not ideal.
Trevor Lawrence and the reigning College Football Playoff national champion Clemson Tigers will kick off their 2019 campaign at home against a conference rival as the premier game on Thursday night of the first weekend of the season. Cross-division rival Georgia Tech comes to visit Death Valley on Aug. 29 for the on-campus kickoff weekend special, which also serves as the college football launch for the league's new ACC Network, which officially goes live a week earlier on Aug. 22.
All of these details, along with dates for every ACC college football game in the upcoming season, were finalized this week with the release of the 2019 schedule. Many of the schedule's highlights -- like the four neutral-site Week 1 kickoff classic appearances -- were already announced, but that hasn't lessened the excitement of seeing games like Duke vs. Alabama in Atlanta, Florida State vs. Boise State in Jacksonville, Miami vs. Florida in Orlando and North Carolina vs. South Carolina in Charlotte on the schedule for Saturday, Aug. 31.
The ACC will get to not only start the first weekend of the 2019 season but finish it, taking the Labor Day Monday spotlight with Notre Dame's visit to play Louisville. That's one of the five contractually-obligated ACC opponents for the Irish, a full ACC member in all other sports, along with home games against Virginia (Sept. 28), Virginia Tech (Nov. 2) and Boston College (Nov. 23) as well a trip to Durham to play Duke on Nov. 09.
The 2019 ACC schedule also features one of the most unique scheduling quirks in modern Power Five football. On Thursday, Sept. 12, Mack Brown and the North Carolina Tar Heels will make the short drive west on I-40 to play against Wake Forest. Only that game won't count towards either teams ACC record, but instead as a non-conference game that satisfies the ACC's requirement that every team play one Power Five opponent in addition to its eight conference games.
The deal between UNC and Wake has been on the books since Jan. 2015.