The NFL’s Black Friday game, added in 2023, kicks off at 3 p.m., early enough to wrap up before the 6 p.m. hour. That’s when the local broadcast protection window that shields high school and college football from primetime interference opens up. The same window that ACC has, for long, seen it as a window of opportunity for national exposure. Clemson, so far, has not.
Here’s how it has unfolded:

• Spring–Summer 2024: The ACC, in coordination with ESPN, formally asked Clemson to move its 2024 rivalry game against South Carolina from Saturday, Nov. 30, to Black Friday, Nov. 29. ESPN had offered a 7:30 p.m. ABC primetime slot for the event.
• Clemson’s Athletic Director, Graham Neff, and head coach Dabo Swinney, rejected the proposal at the time. 
• The disagreement came to light through court documents filed during Clemson’s legal dispute with the ACC over media rights. An internal May 7, 2024, email from ACC senior associate commissioner Michael Strickland expressed the league’s “disappointment” in Clemson’s refusal. 
• Strickland outlined that ESPN and the ACC had offered scheduling concessions to Clemson in exchange for cooperation, including a future Black Friday game hosted by South Carolina—possibly as soon as 2025.
• South Carolina officials confirmed they were interested in hosting that 2025 game at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia. However, they dropped the idea after learning that Clemson was unwilling to reciprocate.

While Clemson has hosted weeknight games before, like Thursday matchups in 2013 and 2019, school officials maintained that a Black Friday game at home would place unusual demands on campus resources, city infrastructure, and holiday travel concerns for players, staff, and fans. But the top assistant to ACC commissioner Jim Phillips says the idea is very much alive. Here’s the latest: 

In his latest interview with The State, Strickland reaffirmed that the conference is still interested in the Clemson–South Carolina rivalry game to see a move up to Black Friday at some point. He said, “Our job is to try to find ways to maximize opportunities for each individual school and, at the same time, work for the collective good of the ACC.” While he didn’t revisit the details of last year’s negotiations with Clemson, he pointed to Georgia Tech’s recent experience as a blueprint for what’s possible.

“Georgia Tech was eager to sign up for that opportunity, and they played a classic ball game,” Strickland said, referring to the 2024 rivalry clash that aired at 7:30 p.m. on ABC. The same game that brought in the largest average audience (~8.5 million) to watch a regular-season game involving an ACC team since the start of the 2023 season, peaking at 11.5 million during the extra sessions.

 “They just came up one second or one point shy, and Georgia Tech will reap a number of benefits from that for a number of years.” With the Jackets already locking in for the 2025 edition of the same “Clean, Old-fashioned hate” game on Black Friday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the conference hopes to replicate that kind of exposure across more contests. “So I applaud Georgia Tech for being willing to do that,” Strickland continued.

 “We talk with our schools all the time about scheduling opportunities, and sometimes it works for schools, and sometimes it doesn’t.” The ACC’s new revenue-sharing model now factors in TV ratings, which means games like Georgia-Georgia Tech broadcast in a marquee slot and watched by millions yield financial upside. Asked if he’d like to see Clemson play on Black Friday at Death Valley, Strickland didn’t name names but made the league’s position clear:

 “What I hope happens is that the ACC finds a way to maximize all of our exposure opportunities… If it’s Clemson, great. If it’s not, and it’s somebody else that gets to benefit from that opportunity, that’s great as well.”