Wake Forest football 2024 schedule: Can’t miss game. Toughest stretch. Intriguing opponent

Wake Forest has its first schedule in the new era of the ACC.

The Demon Deacons, members of the now 17-school Atlantic Coast Conference, will begin a season that will feature no divisions and 68 total conference games.

It ushers in a new scheduling model that protects 16 annual conference matchups, including Wake Forest’s rivalries with N.C. State (Oct. 5) and Duke (Nov. 30). The Demon Deacons travel to Stanford on Oct. 26, which will mark the first of three California trips for ACC games over the next seven seasons.

Wake Forest is one of six ACC schools traveling to California this year.

The Demon Deacons will open their season under the lights on Thursday, Aug. 29 in their first matchup against North Carolina A&T since 2004.

It has seven home games at Allegacy Stadium, including its first four. After that meeting with the Aggies, they have a pair of early-season games against Virginia (Sept. 7) and Ole Miss (Sept. 14). Then, they’ll have the first of two bye weeks before hosting Louisiana on Sept. 28.

The Demon Deacons’ final non-conference game will be at Connecticut on Oct. 19.

Its Friday night home conference game against California on Nov. 8 will mark Wake Forest’s first football game against the Golden Bears in school history.

Can’t miss game

Duke at Wake Forest, Nov. 30: Wake lost on a last-second field goal to the Blue Devils last year, and this year’s meeting will come in the final week of the regular season. That 24-21 loss was one of the closer losses for the Demon Deacons; Duke finished 8-5 and won the Birmingham Bowl. The Blue Devils will have a new quarterback after Riley Leonard transferred to Notre Dame. Wake, which set a program-record 11-game home win streak between 2020 to 2022, had four sellouts at home last year, and it hopes it can cap another strong season with a win against its longtime in-state rival.

Toughest stretch

Wake, which opens the season with four straight home games, will be on the road four times in five games toward the end of the season. That stretch includes matchups at UConn (Oct. 19), Stanford (Oct. 26), North Carolina (Nov. 16) and Miami (Nov. 23). The Demon Deacons didn’t play the Tar Heels or Hurricanes last year.

Easiest stretch

Wake plays North Carolina A&T on a Thursday night to start the season, which should be an opportunity for another sellout. Its Week 2 meeting welcomes a familiar opponent in Virginia — which is on the heels of a 3-9 season and 13th-place finish in the ACC. The Demon Deacons started last year 4-0, and a pair of early-season victories could be important as they get into their revamped ACC schedule.

Notable nonconference game

Ole Miss at Wake Forest, Sept. 14: The Demon Deacons begin a home-and-home with the Rebels, who went 11-2 and defeated Penn State in the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl in December. Wake has beaten Ole Miss in each of its last two meetings: a 27-3 victory in Oxford in 2006, and a 41-yard Sam Swank field goal in the last minute lifted it to a 30-28 win in 2008.

Filled with intrigue

North Carolina A&T at Wake Forest, Aug. 29: The Demon Deacons will open their season at home in their first matchup with the Aggies in 20 years. Last year’s season opener, a 37-17 win over Elon, drew more than 30,000 fans to the newly-renamed Allegacy Stadium, including 4,000 students. It’ll be just the Demon Deacons’ second meeting all-time with the Greensboro school, which went 1-10 last year. Wake hopes to have a sellout at its season opener for the second straight year.

WAKE FOREST SCHEDULE 2024

What is the ACC scheduling model?

The 2024-2030 schedule model will continue with no divisions, feature 17 schools, and will increase the number of annual conference matchups from 56 to 68.

The top two teams based on conference winning percentage will compete in the ACC Football Championship Game on the first Saturday in December at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The approved format will continue to have each member institution play eight conference games per season, with all 17 teams playing each other at least twice over the next seven seasons — once at home and once on the road. The current 14 conference teams will play a total of three times each in California over the seven years and none will travel west to California in back-to-back seasons.

The new scheduling model protects 16 annual matchups. Of the 16 matchups, 11 are retained from the current 3-5-5 schedule model, two are restored rivalries from the divisional format in Miami-Virginia Tech and NC State-Wake Forest, and the three new schools fill the remaining three. The annual protected matchups are Boston College-Syracuse, Boston College-Pitt, Syracuse-Pitt, North Carolina-Virginia, North Carolina-Duke, North Carolina-NC State, NC State-Wake Forest, NC State-Duke, Duke-Wake Forest, Virginia Tech-Virginia, Florida State-Clemson, Miami-Florida State, Miami-Virginia Tech, Stanford-Cal, Stanford-SMU, and Cal-SMU.