The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic league in the United States. Founded in 1953, the ACC's twelve member universities compete in twenty sports in the Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Football teams participate in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the higher of two levels of Division I college football.

Charter members of the ACC were Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina, and Wake Forest. The seven ACC charter members had previously been members of the Southern Conference, but they left partially due to that league's ban on post-season play. After drafting a set of bylaws for the creation of a new league, the seven withdrew from the Southern Conference at the Spring Meeting on the morning of May 8, 1953.

The bylaws were ratified and the ACC officially came into existence on June 14, 1953. On December 4, 1953, officials convened in Greensboro, North Carolina, and admitted Virginia into the conference. In 1971, the ACC lost a member in the University of South Carolina, which two decades later in 1991 became a member of the Southeastern Conference.

The ACC operated with seven members until the addition of the former Southeastern Conference member Georgia Tech from the Metro Conference on April 3, 1978. The addition of Florida State, also formerly from the Metro Conference, on July 1, 1991, brought the total to nine. The ACC added three members from the Big East Conference during the 2003 cycle of conference realignment: Miami and Virginia Tech joined on July 1, 2004, and Boston College joined on July 1, 2005, as the league's twelfth member and the first and only one from New England.

The expansion was not without controversy, since Connecticut, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, and West Virginia (and, initially, Virginia Tech) filed lawsuits against the ACC and against Miami and Boston College for conspiring to weaken the Big East Conference.

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