Feeling like post bluff this might be unanimous or one no (FSU). All this posturing, but the math just does not add up for a mass exit for 5+ years. Might as well expand the market and try to beat the Big 12 for bronze.
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If this is a long-term play, I could see doing this. It makes little sense in terms of geography, but in today’s climate, expanding your conference with P5 schools may make sense as leverage for what comes next. But is the ACC thinking that way? And academic prestige is a variable here.
But it’s sad that we’re watching a musical chairs tournament taking place over a few years involving institutions of higher education.
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I think they are coming to a realization that you need to plan long term. Taking Stanford Cal and SMU takes some teams off the board for the Big 10 and Big 12. Further it strengthens the ACC against the Big 12 for the Big 12’s next TV deal (the ACC needs for them to be viewed as fourth at that point or the Big 12 could end up with a better TV deal). Then there is the ugly possibility that the only schools that really move the needle for the SEC and Big 10 are Clemson and possibly FSU (this is all football directed anyway). You make this move for the 12 other schools to feel confident that we are in a strong position as the third best conference. You then worry about other eventualities when they are more pressing.
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Make it stop please
https://twitter.com/RTD_MikeBarber/status/1694445631090086097
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Paywall article, but the most important takeaway (IMO) is that schools are talking about how to divvy up the new money from bringing in 3 new schools and a likely scenario is performance-based. I think FSU’s public freakout from a few weeks back makes more sense in this context.
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Buying off Clemson and FSU.
Supposedly the money will be distributed primarily based on Football success.
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Clemson and/or FSU will probably approve now to get a few more million per year for a few years before they jump ship anyway. SMU may never make any revenue from the ACC as in 7 years the conference will likely have fallen apart or will be falling apart. Clemson or FSU could care less about the long term viability of the conference so why not take some extra money for a few years.
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And they have nowhere else to land in the near term.
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I’m generally impartial to the idea of conference expansion. But if FSU and Clemson pulled off a coup of dividing the money based success in football then I may have to rethink which school really is the smartest school in the ACC
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Does this just relate to new money brought in by the additions or to existing pots of money as well?
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Devil’s advocate view (I don’t fully agree, but I’m sympathetic) – long term viability of the conference depends on Clemson/FSU (or Miami or maybe UNC or whoever, really) competing with Michigan/OSU/Georgia/Bama/ et al. So Clemson/FSU whining about $$ is actually good for the conference staying a strong number 3, or even competitive with the top 2.
That was my read, but the article was vague, given these are all back room whispers at this point
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Not a bad take honestly. I think you’re on to something clearly football moves the needle and the ACC needs something to keep themselves relevant in football if they aren’t going to raid a conference. It could be a short term loss for long term gain. My fear is it’s more likely a short term loss and in 3-5 years FSU and Clemson still bounce and the ACC is left where they are and all the teams have missed out on a few dollars.
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Maybe a bit more than I should share, but here’s the relevant part:
Because ESPN has a pro rata clause with the ACC, the league would be paid out for full shares for each addition. If that money is pooled after paying out the partial shares to the Bay Area schools, it allows the ACC to bring in new, additional revenue that it can disperse however it chooses.
The expectation, sources said this week, is that the money would be dispersed based on performance.
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I guess I could be alright with that as long as it doesn’t mess with the money we’re already making. That said, I also still think FSU and Clemson are gone the second they figure out how to do so legally without paying half a billion dollars, so I’m not terribly inclined to forgo money for UVA to keep them happy or competitive or whatever. But hopefully we’d still get at least some slice of the new pie.
One thing I have been wondering about more recently though is what all of this will look like in 5 years. Will it keep hurdling toward two super leagues and it’ll be obvious we need to jump on board (like it feels now), or will this current set up start to falter as some of the TV money tightens and it becomes obvious that’s not the eventual endgame (eg football breaks off from other sports). It’ll probably be 10 or 20 years before we’re really able to evaluate how good and/or bad the ACC GOR was for all our schools. It’s either keeping us from taking essential actions during a time of critical change, or holding our conference together through turbulent seas that tore apart other conferences and getting us through to whatever the next phase of all this is. The former is probably more likely, but who knows.
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Second paragraph is very well said and is the million dollar question in all this
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Sadly, there is no good path for ACC survival. Worse yet, every sport save football is about to enter the twitlight zone because of the football driven realignment of conferences. The only solution I have read that makes sense is to divorce P5 football from conference membership.This would likely result in two divisions with majority of SEC and B10 in one (along with a couple others) and the rest in a second. The TV execs are destroying the rest of the sports to rake in the chips on big money college football.
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We are assuming that the ACC will die eventually because the big 2 decide to grab 20-24 schools. Honestly that might not be in the cards. If this move is completed, it was really the only move left on the board to get really valuable brand names in the conference, with the added benefit of visibility in two major metro areas. This move is for survival, but also insurance in case the SEC and Big 10 cannot stomach a 24 team league.
The ACC is going to survive to 2036 because of the GOR and the exit fee that would be required to leave. The question might be if all 15 teams currently in the ACC will all still be in the conference in 2036.
There’s a mailbag article on the Athletic that puts the exit fee at ~$120 million. Add that fee to the lost revenues from the ACC owning the media rights for each school until 2036, and it makes sense that the ACC will be around in some form in the middle of the 2030s because leaving will be expensive.
Maybe ACC membership changes as we get closer to the next TV deals for the Big 10 (2030) and the SEC (2034), but who knows what the landscape will look like at that point?
The Athletic mailbag for those who subscribe is here: ACC football mailbag: Over/under on how long league can retain its current members - The Athletic
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