NC State coach Dave Doeren believes Textile Bowl vs. Clemson should be ‘cemented’ into schedule each year

When the ACC added Cal, SMU and Stanford, it forced the league to rework its scheduling model for a seven-year stretch from 2024 to 2030. And with that, came some interesting schedule quirks to have all 17 ACC teams play one another at least twice over that stretch. 

For NC State, that meant snapping one of its most-coveted league games: the Textile Bowl. Clemson and NC State had met each year from 1971 to 2024 (excluding the 2020 COVID season) to battle for one of the few trophies in the ACC. 

But now, the hardware will reside with Clemson for at least the next two seasons since the two teams are not scheduled to play one another this season or next. 

NC State coach Dave Doeren, who holds a 2-9 mark against Dabo Swinney and the Tigers through his first 12 seasons in Raleigh, couldn’t believe the historic game was tabled for the next two seasons. 

“I was kind of shocked when I saw it,” Doeren said at ACC Kickoff last week in Charlotte. “To me, it’s a trophy game, one of the only trophy games in the ACC. I don’t know. That one should have been cemented in, in my opinion.”

Although NC State will not play Clemson this fall, the Wolfpack has the opportunity to square off against Duke and Miami this fall — two teams that Doeren has only seen four times each in his tenure. As he continued to think about the ACC’s scheduling, he did like the fact his team will have a good mix of teams to see over the next six seasons.

“[I’m] excited that I get to play other teams more,” Doeren said. “That was a complaint of mine. I only saw Duke one time in six years when I first got here.”

Doeren is currently 1-3 against Duke, the lone win a 31-20 result at home in 2020, while he is 1-3 against Miami, led by a 20-6 win over the Hurricanes at Carter-Finley Stadium in 2023.

In addition to the ACC’s scheduling, NC State has its non-conference home-and-home against Virginia, starting this season in Raleigh before going to Charlottesville next year. That’s another team that Doeren has only seen just three times in league play during his tenure — he’s 3-0 all-time in those meetings — and the ability to square off with the Cavaliers was an opportunity he didn’t want to pass up on.

Why? It’s an easy road trip for both fan bases and the two programs recruit North Carolina and Virginia at a high clip. A chance to play in front of prospective recruits is exactly what Doeren wants to do with road non-conference games rather than scheduling the likes of Texas Tech, for example, which the Wolfpack traveled to in 2022.

Plus, an added benefit is Virginia was a program willing to play a home-and-home, not requiring a payout to hold the games. And during a time where college football programs are trying to save as much money as possible to use towards revenue sharing with its players, that was the biggest victory about it.

“You don’t understand how hard it is to get games on your schedule,” Doeren said. “It’s hard to get teams when you’re trying to find one that has an open date, is in your recruiting area, fits what they want from a TV standpoint. Why would you go play a team that wants you to pay them over $1 million when you’re trying to have money. You need money right now in the program. We’re trying to find teams where that’s not part of the question.”

Although Doeren has been able to see the positives of the ACC’s new scheduling model to get every conference member at least one home game and one road trip to each program between 2024 and 2030, he still wishes Clemson was a protected member of their schedule — just like Duke, UNC and Wake Forest are.

“I like that we get to play more teams more often, I also think we should have some games that we always play,” Doeren said. “Clemson and the Textile Bowl, it’s a great game to have. It’s weird not to have them on the schedule.”