By the end of the 1952–53 season the Southern Conference had bloated to 17 members and was still seen as a football-centric conference. Maryland and Duke had become national football powers and there weren't many schools in the conference that could regularly compete against them. In an effort to create a more balanced round-robin schedule and thus secure an automatic bid to the Orange Bowl, the top eight football schools from the conference—Maryland, Duke, UNC, Virginia, South Carolina, Clemson, Wake Forest, and NC State—left to form the Atlantic Coast Conference.