By james art 
By Jerry Ratcliffe
Photo: UVA Athletics
Virginia will play seven home games this season, including three opponents for the first time in program history, as the ACC on Friday released the dates of six contests.
UVA’s home schedule will consist of Coastal Carolina (Aug. 30), William & Mary (Sept. 13), Stanford (Sept. 20), Florida State (Fri., Sept. 26) and Washington State (Oct. 18). The Cavaliers will also host Wake Forest and Virginia Tech (dates TBA).
Virginia’s road schedule: NC State (in non-conference play, Sept. 6), with games at California, Duke, Louisville and North Carolina (dates TBA).
Clearly, the Cavaliers’ schedule is less challenging than this past season, when UVA faced SMU, Clemson and Notre Dame—three opponents that all made the 12-team College Football Playoff. Virginia also avoided a matchup with Miami.
In fact, as far as the conference schedule goes, four of UVA’s 2025 foes (FSU, Stanford, Wake and Cal) finished below the Cavaliers in the 2024 ACC standings, and a fifth (UNC) finished tied with Virginia in the league.
Of the 2025 ACC opponents, only three finished among the top eight ACC teams in the ’24 rankings: Louisville 5th, Duke 7th and Virginia Tech 8th.
Three new teams will jump onto the Cavaliers’ schedule for the first time: Stanford, Cal and Washington.
Oddly enough, UVA has played almost as many opponents from the former PAC-12 as the original members of the old ACC (Wake Forest, Duke, UNC and NC State). Also, how weird is it that Virginia plays NC State in a non-conference game, but plays Stanford and Cal in conference games?
UVA will play a rare game Friday night against Florida State, which is coming off perhaps the most disappointing season of any program in the country. Can Tony Elliott join his four predecessors – George Welsh, Al Groh, Mike London and Bronco Mendenhall – all with a win over the Seminoles?
Wells and Groh did it the hard way by upsetting FSU during the Bobby Bowden era.
Overall, Virginia has the opportunity to get off to a decent start to the season with Coastal Carolina, NC State, William & Mary, Stanford and FSU being the slate’s top five games.
The rest of the schedule will be revealed Monday at 9:00 PM on the ACC Network and ESPN2.