CHAPEL HILL - Considering North Carolina's inconsistencies last weekend and its upcoming Thursday night test at Rutgers, coach Butch Davis said this weekend's open date comes "at a good time."

He can thank the ACC.

For the first time since nonweekend games became a staple, no conference team faces a short preparation week before or after a Thursday game.

The Tar Heels' Sept. 11 matchup at the Scarlet Knights, for example, marks their only game in a three-week span. N.C. State, which opened the season on a Thursday night, had an extra two days to prepare for Saturday's game against William & Mary. And Wake Forest, which plays Clemson on Oct. 9, will have more than a week to prepare for its next game.

In all, nine different league schools play on a Thursday night this season.

"At first blush, no one is ever going to be completely happy with their schedule," said Michael Kelly, the ACC's associate commissioner for football operations. "... But we're proud that this year, we could make it work."

Because frankly, it's difficult.

The ACC allows its football teams to schedule their own nonconference games. Then, with the help of a computer program that factors in other criteria, such as television schedules and schools' requests to have certain dates open, the league shuffles its contests around those nonconference games.

If the schedules seem unbalanced or unfair -- say, a team has more than two straight conference games on the road or more than three consecutive conference home games -- the league may ask the school to try to move a nonconference game.

The reason it worked out this time, Kelly said, is that by a quirk of the calender, the regular season lasts 14 weeks rather than the usual 13, giving the scheduler more wiggle room.

"With all of the Thursday games and now the 12-game schedules, I don't think this would ever work in a 13-week span," Kelly said. "But we're glad it did this time."

As is UNC's Davis, who has extra days to prepare the Tar Heels for Rutgers' multiple pressure packages, fast defense and All-America candidates.

"They play hard, their special teams are really, really good," Davis said. "It's good to have the extra time."

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