Football

ACC football title game moved to Orlando’s Camping World Stadium because of HB2

Courtesy of the ACC

The Atlantic Coast Conference football championship game will be held at Orlando's Camping World Stadium.

The 2016 Atlantic Coast Conference football championship game has been moved to Orlando’s Camping World Stadium, the conference announced Thursday. The game was originally supposed to be held at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, but the conference announced on Sept. 14 that it will relocate all neutral site championships the were supposed to be held in North Carolina in the 2016-17 seasons.

The game is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 3 and will kick off in primetime at either 7:45 p.m. (if on ESPN) or 8 p.m. (if on ABC).

The ACC made its original announcement about moving the title events two days after the NCAA announced it will relocate its seven championship events from North Carolina because of House Bill 2, which most notably forces everyone to use the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate and prevents transgender people from using the bathrooms of their associated gender.

The conference is keeping all of its on-campus championships in North Carolina.

Camping World Stadium is home to the Citrus Bowl and Russell Athletic Bowl. Florida State, an ACC team, played its season-opener at the 65,000-seat stadium, beating Ole Miss.



“Orlando is a great town,” North Carolina head coach Larry Fedora said on the ACC teleconference Wednesday, before the move was announced, regarding his team’s bowl appearance at the stadium in 2015. “I thought the people there that put on the bowl did a tremendous job with all the accommodations and how they handled our team and what they did with our team, and they were very easy to work with. And then Orlando itself, you’ve got so much going on in Orlando that your fans and everybody that’s traveling with you, they have a wonderful time. I know my family really, really enjoyed it.”

The ACC is refunding all tickets bought for the old site and giving those customers priority to buy new tickets.





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