NC State and Duke willing to schedule non-conference matchup, but it's going to be a while (or never)

NC State gets both Wake Forest and North Carolina annually in football, but expansion put an end to the yearly contests between the Wolfpack and Duke. Both schools have said they'd be open to scheduling a meeting with each other outside of conference play, but there's been no progress beyond the part where they said it's a thing they could do.

"We don't play Duke for six more years," Doeren said. "It would be a great trip, I think, for both schools. But we haven't been able to make it work yet."

But [Duke senior associate director of athletics Gerald Harrison] said Duke athletics director Kevin White and Debbie Yow, his counterpart at N.C. State, have discussed playing nonconference games and both are receptive to the idea.

Trouble is that both schools have been busy filling up their non-conference slates with Power 5 schools. NC State has serieseses with West Virginia and Mississippi State on the way, along with games against Notre Dame. Duke has Northwestern from 2015 through 2018, and Baylor in both 2017 and 2018, and the short of it is that a Wolfpack-Blue Devils non-conference game essentially can't happen this decade. (Theoretically, it can happen, it's just that neither school will be inclined to add another Power 5 team to their schedules.)

The next scheduled meeting between the two is a conference game in 2020, and after 2021, State and Duke are clear of present Power 5 non-conference commitments, so who knows what could happen in the way future future! Until we reach the way way future, or some series already on the books get canceled, there seems little reason to expect the outlook to change.