Yep. Imo, there are exactly 2 “real” options to keep the ACC together long-term as opposed to rearranging the deck chairs while it goes down (either is a huge lift):
Suddenly become genuinely good at football. Not SEC or B1G good, but clearly the #3 league Clemson, FSU and Miami returning to their primes would probably do it if everyone else just sucked a little less.
Find a way to make people care about “non-revenue sports”. Afaik it’s never been done which is why they’re “non-revenue sports”. But the ACC is GREAT at them, so if there was a way to make money off them, even a little, it would help a lot.
I guess #3 would be to find a way to make the ACC Network a big deal. Originally I figured that was impossible w/o doing 1 or 2, but then I remembered an old friend who worked for a magazine that started as a supplement to a new website in the 90s and while the website folded the magazine somehow kept going for quite a while. So maybe it’s possible.
Seems to be a combination of conference mismanagement and WSU athletics department mismanagement colliding together at a bad time.
Might be a bit of an outlier in severity, but it is also a harbinger of what may come for ACC schools not too far down the road if the status quo strategy is continued.
My translation: some pac-12 media partner was all like “I paid how much for what now? I demand to see the manager! [Kliavkoff shows up…] you’re the manager?!”
The bit about resolving “overpayments by a media partner” is interesting but vague. Was this just an oopsie, the media partner accidentally paid too much, the conference didn’t notice, and now that the money has been spent the media partner is coming back for a refund? Or was this driven by conference realignment (some prepaid amount is now contractually due back to the media partner because of the loss of schools)… and the conference somehow didn’t realize the implications?
Either way, add in the rest of it and it sounds like the Pac-12 budget guys (and WSU too) need to get their house in order.
Yeah, good question. My guess was something along the lines of a contract that stipulated a certain payment but had clawbacks (or audit rights, or whatever,) if certain milestones were not achieved. But just a guess b/c I don’t really know much about that industry. Or any industry. I only know about having bad takes about UVa hoops, and I’m the best there is.
In addition to the George Washington University, five universities joined the Association of American Universities (AAU) on Thursday: Arizona State University; the University of California, Riverside; the University of Miami; the University of Notre Dame; and the University of South Florida .
Arizona State, the school that Aunt Becky literally went to jail for so her daughter wouldn’t go there and go to USC instead, is now among the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the US. Amazing.
