I completely agree that the decision will be made at a level above the AD. I also agree that contingencies need to be considered. That said, I don’t believe the prospect of Clemson or FSU leaving in the immediate future is a pressing concern. I don’t believe that the current GOR arrangement is in jeopardy. For the moment, NIL and the prospects of “pay-for-play” are likely to have a far more significant impact on the future of intercollegiate sports. Professionalism is upon us, and I don’t think anyone knows where it will take us. That should be a far greater concern than the current kerfluffle found on sports forums discussing conference realignment.
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Not sure where you got 9 mil from but the SEC distributed about 45 mil per school last year and an additional 23 mil per school to help with Covid related deficits. The new SEC tv contract starting in 2024 is expected to increase that to 68 mil per school.
The ACC distributed 32 mil and the TV contract isn’t up for another decade.
A school could make up a 50 mil exit fee in less than 2 years. Lawyers can negotiate a present value to the GOR too. I don’t see that as an impediment.
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Perhaps this has been said so my apology in advance if that is the case. Several writers have emphasized that Swofford blundered by signing over television rights to ESPN for 20 years. TV revenue is thus not going to increase for ACC teams whereas it will definitely increase during that period for SEC and Big10 teams. And it’s a BIG increase for the SEC teams.
The only way that the ACC can renegotiate the agreement with ESPN is to add another team minimally and ideally more than one. And as someone pointed out, it has to be teams in decent tv markets so Oklahoma St. or Texas Tech won’t help. I don’t know what teams might be attractive enough to add, but I think it is a given that the ACC HAS to add teams in order to force ESPN to renegotiate the contract with more favorable financial terms. Otherwise we fall further and further behind the SEC and the Big10.
Don’t think other conferences are going to be chomping at the bit too hard but nonetheless. We need to be proactive too.
Thanks for the correction. I had thought the payouts were $43 mil and $34 mil respectively. And, come 2024, you may be right. However, I believe that there is the possibility that NIL, and associated issues, could so fundamentally change intercollegiate athletics that subsequent events may out pace any realignment considerations. If NIL evolves into pay-to-play, as some have suggested is likely, then I can see athletics being dropped by many colleges, UVa included. Professionalism could be the end of intercollegiate athletics, at which point the payouts offered by the SEC and B1G become inconsequential. The more I learn, and the more I think about it, the less certain I become about the future of Virginia athletics. I don’t think what Clemson or FSU decide is of much importance now.
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I think that may be an overly pessimistic outlook, but you may very well prove to be right. I don’t think we can rule out any possibilities on the spectrum of outcomes.
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One of the many prescient things Vonnegut wrote in “Player Piano” was on college sports. At one point, some characters are talking to a college offensive lineman from… Pitt, I want to say. And he’s like 34 because iirc college sports had stopped playing around and officially became professional, though most universities had dropped sports.
Its not one of his better books overall, but the parts on mass automation, political polarization and fanaticism, and other things are incredibly on the ball.
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TV markets aren’t as important anymore. In the last round, you wanted big markets because that meant more cable subscribers who would be forced to pay 67 cents per month for the (then future) ACC Network as part of their package. That’s why getting your channel on a basic tier instead of a sports tier was so important too. We added Syracuse because we could force ACC network on all of the cable subscribers in NYC.
In the years since, cable subscriptions have dropped, these days by 10%+ annually now. The traditional cable subscription model might be dead in 5 years. Look how fast broadband overtook dial-up 20 years ago. Plus cable companies are resisting paying for more channels. We’ve been trying to get Comcast to add ACC Network for how long now?
Streaming is taking over so it doesn’t matter how big a market a school is in. Adding Cincinnati isn’t going to add every cable subscriber in Ohio and TCU doesn’t get you money from everyone in the Metroplex. You need a school with fans who care enough that they’ll sign up for Sling or YTTV or Hulu Live, etc… just to be able to watch their school play. Doesn’t matter where those people are, could be anywhere in the country.
So besides ND, who’s bringing enough of those fans that will subscribe to an ACC Network stream to increase league revenue by 40 mil so the other schools aren’t getting their league distribution share cut? 67 cents a month, split it with ESPN so 33 cents a month or 4 bucks a year. 10 million new subscribers, from streaming and cable combined. If you factor in increased in person attendance, more ad revenue on the network, NCAA tournament units and bowl game payouts, maybe you only need 6 or 8 million new subscribers.
Personally, I’m not seeing that among any school that would leave their current conference.
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It doesn’t matter how the content is delivered, whether dish, cable or streaming. I agree with you on that point. (Although Syracuse was added LONG before the ACC network was created.) It’s still ESPN programming and they get money from streaming as well as cable, although I expect streaming income is lower. But ESPN’s advertising income is still related to the number of viewers and thus the size of the market. And it is still the case that in order for the ACC to force ESPN to renegotiate their contract, they have to add additional schools. Unless the ACC begins receiving more income from ESPN and other networks, the budgets of ACC programs will fall increasingly farther behind the SEC and the Big10.
When we speak about the impact that streaming is having on the cable companies the focus is the segment of consumers that have cut the cord and are paying for the content they want. We cut the cord a year ago and our entertainment is Netflix, Prime, HBO Max, Apple TV, Paramount Plus and the Disney/ESPN/Hulu Plus package. The ESPN plus is junk and does not contain streams of the normal ESPN network… you get 30/30 and obscure Games. It is this route that is reducing the TV deals as there are plenty of people getting by fine on this new model and no longer forced to pay carriage fees on stuff they don’t want….yes there are plenty of people that don’t care about sports…
While Bowlsby got schooled by Sanford… he mentioned the cord cutting issue in a press conference and thought that would help in curbing realignment… I think it only made Texas look hard at their longhorn network which is probably not worth as much in a distribution system that is ala carte… and so that… and what SEC payout will be…is getting them to jump…
I also think that the Disney plus model shows that if needed…ESPN can and will pivot to a streaming sub model of their sports content which they are building up to appeal to a variety of interests…
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Why do you think adding schools will cause ESPN to renegotiate? In the old model where the conference was merely a content provider, if they upgraded the content (with more schools) then they would deserve more return. In this partnership/profit sharing model, if the ACC improves content, they already benefit on the back end. They take a portion of any higher subscription fees from cable companies. They take a cut of any additional advertising revenue. Seems to me that potential expansion would’ve already been accounted for in the TV contract.
While I am unsure the college landscape in 2025 will resemble anything close to what it does today, it occurs to me that ESPN and the ACC are joined at the hip. While the 20 year assignment of rights to ESPN is looking to be an increasingly poor decision, it is also true that those rights lose significant value (to ESPN) if the ACC falls apart. If renegotiating the agreement keeps the conference moderately viable, then I would think it is in ESPN’s interest to do so. I imagine that the eminent departures of Clemson and FSU (or, anyone else) would be a more compelling reason to negotiate a new contract than the addition of another school. Of course, all this assumes that intercollegiate conferences will still exist in the aftermath of NIL. Regardless, how interested is ESPN in broadcasting football games of an ACC without its premier football powers? They’re in a twenty year relationship, too.
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I don’t believe ACC teams would get a cut of higher subscription fees or advertising revenue. Regardless of how you receive the broadcast–dish, cable, or streaming or the advertising dollars received–the ACC gets a set annual payment from ESPN. I believe it’s around $20 million a year. It’s a contract that Swofford signed and I believe extends until 2036.
The ACC would be able to renegotiate only if they can add a significant market that would increase viewership. For example, say the ACC adds Villanova in basketball so they have an even 16 teams. The Philly-Jersey-NYC market is big and Villanova is consistently ranked in the top 25. The ACC could reasonably demand to renegotiate the contract from adding a major team in a major market to the league.
Look, I don’t claim to be an expert on this. I read a number of websites/writers (ESPN, the Athletic, Sports Illustrated and some local papers – one of the benefits of being retired 
) and they are saying that the ACC has to add a team or teams to force renegotiation of the ESPN contract. Maybe I’ve misunderstood what they are saying (I am an old fart) but I doubt it in this case only because I’ve read the same thing in columns by different writers/websites.
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By adding a team, the ACC could force the renegotiation. However, given the impending changes in intercollegiate athletics, it may be in ESPN’s own best interests to renegotiate its contract with the ACC. If Clemson and FSU leave, the value of the football package could lose significant value to them. I strongly doubt that there are any provisions which prevent the voluntary renegotiation of the contract.
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Great point. Totally agree.
That having been said, barring an unlikely fundamental restructuring of how the ACC works, its just a matter of time before Clemson moves on. I mean, it just is. To call a spade a spade, the ACC is more like the Big East than it is the SEC. We’re a basketball/non-revenue sport conference that actually cares about academics to a greater degree than any other Power 5 conference and only the PAC12 is even in the same ballpark. When the gap was $5-10M, the hassle and lawsuits and tradition were probably enough of a guardrail. But in a world of $20M (and growing) gaps, its inevitable.
Presumably Clemson would decamp to the SEC. South Carolina would probably try to block it but no one cares about South Carolina. FSU/Miami might try to move as well, but its today, not 15 years ago, and they’re shadows of their former selves. I assume Florida would try to block them and Florida actually has some clout so we’ll see.
The ACC would like to tweak things around enough to keep things attractive for Clemson, and in the world of 6 months ago I’d say they best that could be managed was a short-term delaying action but now we have NIL so I’m less confident. On the one hand, NIL is such a game changer that our current view might be hopelessly outdated by next year. On the other hand, given how UVA has reacted so far, it seems unlikely the NIL changes will be ones that, looking from a conference perspective, play out in UVA’s favor. Its not impossible we’ll benefit, but I think its more likely to make the current gaps worse.
Color me pessimistic. I think the odds are higher than in 20 years UVA no longer has a football team at all than we have a football team that plays in the same conference as Clemson.
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I obviously do not run this site but could we have a separate thread for realignment? Whenever I see that this thread has five new posts I get excited that there’s a new practice video or something (oh the naivety).
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I would give you 1000 likes if I could for suggesting that.
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Or just a general thread for off topic posts, every AAU thread that was started has been overrun with them
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I think that would be helpful too, though it seems inevitable for many threads that run for a long time to veer off topic from time to time. Realignment just seems to have enough interest/content to warrant its own thread
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