Steve Addazio has a lot of authority. His decisions on recruiting, rosters, and gameday management will affect the course of a program's future, and that's no small thing.

But he knows where his authority ends.

When it comes to matters affecting the entire conference, such as when games are played -- on Friday nights, for example -- or which teams comprise each division of the Atlantic Coast Conference, he's just another guy.

But at his weekly press conference on Monday, Addazio wasn't silent. He allowed his to be a voice shouting into the wind. Even if it doesn't make a difference. That's how strongly he feels about the issues of geography and rivalries, and how the ACC can -- and should -- do a better job of linking those things to its decision-making in terms of divisional alignment and scheduling.

Syracuse week was a perfect opportunity for him to opine on that.

"I think it's huge," he said when asked about the importance of having a geographical rivalry game. "I think Pittsburgh should be on our side. I don't understand all that. Honestly, I don't get it, but I'm big on the geographical deals. Even when we play out of conference, those games to be geographically based."

Boston College ends its regular season with a game against Pittsburgh but the Eagles and Panthers have played against one another just a single time, in 2014, since 2004. BC and Pitt played a game almost annually from 1970-2004 with only a few exceptions (1975-76, 1982-84, 1986, 1992).

Addazio is uniquely positioned to speak out on the matter because of his background as a coach. He's got experience at Boston College that's relevant but an entire career before that which has also informed his judgement.

"Probably part of it is I got brought up, when I was at Syracuse and the Big East, and I'm used to that kind of thing," he said. "It's good fan interest. It's good player interest. It's good recruiting interest. I love it. So the more of that, the better, to me.

"But, again, that's not in my control, any of that stuff. Since I've been here, we've tried to play non-conference games with regional flair to it to the best of our ability and hope we'll continue to try to do that. So I think these are important."

Addazio said the pageantry of college football is a "critical" component of the sport and what makes it what it is.

"I can remember when I was a young coach and I was starting at Syracuse, and we'd talk about the BC game, the West Virginia game, the Pittsburgh game. We had trophies for them. It was just -- it was fun," he said. "That piece of it was tremendous. And, you know, back at that time, everything was kind of paralleled. We were all kind of the same -- there was no have/have not kind of issues. We were all kind of facing the same challenges. It was a different world. But I'd love to see our conference look at making some of those changes. I just think it's stuck in the same divisions to me. I say it openly. I think that should be revisited. But it doesn't matter what I say."