Agree. The settlement just speeds up the ACC doomsday clock. Everyone knows this, which is why these next few years in U.Va. revenue sports are crucial. And I hope weāre schmoozing the correct P2 power brokers.
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The Big XII went down this exact road with Texas and OU and first it cost them Nebraska and A&M (and also Mizzou and Colorado, who all left effectively in protest) and then they lost Texas and OU anyways.
But sure, Iām confident the ACC knows better.
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Itās a great time to be a fan. Our team sucks, our conference sucks, and college sportsā¦ is less fun than it used to be (due to conference realignment and so many transfers).
We can fix the first thing, anyway. Probably. The others are what they are.
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This is great news. The sooner the ACC dissolves the sooner we can leave to Big or SEC
The ACC isnt the ACC anymore anyway. Honestly, even though logistically I dont know how they get to this, the best thing is to have the cut off football league which is the top 60 schools separate from any conference and then have leagues go back to be reasonably sized 8 to 12 and regional for all other sports. I hope that happens, but who knows where this is a decade from now.
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I would agree, but what annoys me about this is that putting a huge price tag on leaving means the rich schools get out first. Iād rather they either didnāt make these concessions and weāre all tied together till it blows up or the buyout kicks in in 2029 and itās low enough any of us could pay it. The nightmare scenario is FSU, Clemson, and Miami bail and weāre all still trapped in a dead conference for years until we can afford out.
That said, maybe thereās some details that make that less of a concern, like if the conference drops below X members weāre all free or something. But we need to get out and Iād rather not be last off the ship.
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Listening to Staples and Nakos more and he mentions that this date where the number drops below $100m coincides with the next B1G TV deal renegotiating opportunity.
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Nightmare scenario isnāt all that unlikely! I think this move was really bad for the majority of the parties involved unfortunately.
I like to think that we are one of the rich schools. Clemson has more money than us for sure. UNC too. I think Miami and FSU do too, but Miamiās rich booster is no longer rich and FSU has been described as poorer than youād think by more than one source. Also, itās a relatively newer school, so fewer alumni than other schools its size. So we may be richer than either of them.
After that Duke has a wealthy donor base, but I donāt know what they donate to. VT and NCSU have large alumni bases with lots of engineers. Donāt know if that makes up for our professional schools. Donāt know if our law, medicine, or graduate business alums donate to athletics though. Louisvilleās athletic department led the nation in revenue at some point within the past 10 years. SMU has oil money. I think weāre ahead of this group besides SMU.
I think weāre clearly richer than BC, Cuse, Wake, GT, Pitt, Cal and Stanford.
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I still think this settlement is a good thing.
We have a bad situationā that our best football schools want out because they see their peers lapping them.
But I just donāt see how letting that situation fester without a new peacetime arrangement wouldāve been better.
UVa will be best off in an ACC that looks somewhat familiar, IMO. This gives us more time and stability to find a longer term solution.
(And to be clear - we probably wonāt! But thatās not the settlementās fault. Thatās the situationās fault)
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I mean that depends on what you mean by rich. If its funding to everything, weāre clearly pretty close to the top-- you can just use publicly reported endowment size for that.
It has always been unclear to me how that translates to athletics donations though. There is some average rate at which schools receive athletic donations relative to their overall donations, and I have no clue if do better or worse than schools with similar endowment sizes. The public schools with endowments bigger than us (Texas, aTm, Michigan) clearly spend a ton on athletics, never seemed clear to me that we operated at all in the same way.
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Stanford has a $37B endowment. Ours is $14B.
If their donors start putting more into sports, theyāll swamp us.
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True. But Stanford athletics was so poorly funded just 5 years ago that 10ish sports were on the chopping block until donors stepped up to save them. The sailing program was so poor that the coach participated in and got indicted for the āVarsity Bluesā scandal. He wasnāt taking kickbacks to line his own pockets, he was giving all that money to the sailing program.
Stanford athletics didnāt get rich during the Jim Harbaugh years or the Mike Montgomery years. I donāt see them getting rich anytime soon.
Watch this blow up in my face when a brand new crypto billionaire decides to fund Stanford athletics for no reason at all.
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After reading this, you can see why VT is putting money into football and not basketball. I wonder if some other ACC schools will do the same thing and focus mainly on football. Itās too bad that the share percentage isnāt determined by womenās swimming as it should be.
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Or the Mountain West.
I get yelled at on here for projecting us to the Sun Belt, but at least itād be warm
Definitely a better choice.
In the end, it will depend on which chairs are open when the music stops, but itās optimistic to think that we will get to choose our seats.
Easily could be the Big East in a grab for some of the left over ACC schools. I donāt think our situation is bad, but if we do not fix the revenue sports I could easily see us without a seat at the table.
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You mean, this is the part we can fix?
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As a result of the settlement, the penalty to leave the conference has been significantly reduced. The grant of rights remains in place through 2036, but beginning next year, the exit fee will be $165 million. That fee then declines by $18 million per year, leveling at $75 million in 2030-31. Any team that pays the exit fee can leave with its media rights intact.
The timing of the exit penalty reduction is significant. Television deals for the Big Ten (2029-30), Big 12 (2030) and the next iteration of the College Football Playoff (2031) come up for renewal just as that fee goes down to $75 million.
The new revenue distribution model, or ābrand initiative,ā will be based on a five-year rolling average. Sixty percent of total ACC television revenue will go toward this initiative. More weight will be given to more recent viewership. A teamās total viewership will then be divided by the total ACC viewership to equal its percentage of the money available in this pool. The other 40 percent of the television revenue will be distributed evenly among all league schools.
Basketball ratings will be included in the brand initiative, too, but at a smaller rate than football, which is responsible for about 75% of the leagueās TV revenue.
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