Let's Talk About College Sports
The Atlantic Coast Conference Now Reaches From Sea To Shining Sea.
This morning, after a month of discussion, drama, and rumors, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkley (Cal), and Southern Methodist University (SMU) were invited to join the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). All three accepted.
As an alum and fan of an ACC school, I want to say a few words about why I think this had to be done. First, some history:
The Southeastern Conference (SEC) and the Big 10 (B1G) have created strong conferences and accumulated, via expansion, many of the highest profile college athletic programs in the country. Over the past two years, the SEC grabbed the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12, while the B1G grabbed the University of Southern California (USC), and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from the PAC 12. After those two blockbuster moves, things seemed to settle down for a bit.
However, in July things went crazy. The PAC 12 failed to secure a suitable television deal and the University of Colorado bolted for the Big 12. This pebble set off an avalanche as the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and the University of Utah also bolted for the Big 12, while the Universities of Oregon and Washington fled for the B1G. Suddenly the PAC 12 was the PAC 4 with only Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State as members. What a crazy world college athletics has become.
If you want the full story of how the ACC got involved, and eventually ended up bringing Stanford, Cal, and SMU into the fold, read this article from Ross Dellenger.
I think today’s move by the ACC was necessary for several reasons.
Stanford and Cal have high quality athletic departments. While their football programs might be down at the moment, these schools have had amazing success in most other college sports. According to this article “Stanford has won a record 134 NCAA championships — including at least one in 46 straight years — and produced 296 medals at the Summer Olympics. Cal is not far behind with 103 national championships and 223 Olympic medals.” Football may be king, but other sports matter as well. These schools bring additional athletic prowess to an already strong ACC.
The move brings long term stability to the ACC. One of the most common rumors on social media and YouTube sports talk shows is that at any moment, Florida State (FSU) and Clemson, the ACC’s marque football programs, are going to bolt for either the SEC or the B1G and bathe themselves in the riches they so richly deserve. There is one huge problem with this line of thinking. Both schools, along with all the other members of the ACC signed a “grant of rights (GOR)” with the conference that doesn’t expire until 2036. In other words, the ACC owns the media rights for the member schools so that it can negotiate a media deal with a TV network, in this case ESPN. Social media experts, and indeed folks from FSU have claimed that the GOR “will not be a document that stops them from taking action” which presumably means leaving when the SEC or B1G invites them. It should be pointed out however, all of the schools leaving their current conference for other conferences only occurred when their current conferences were close to the expiration of their TV deals. None of these powerhouse universities challenged the GOR they had signed as FSU is threatening to do. It’s possible they have a winning case and can get out at on the cheap, but if not, the cost for a school to leave the ACC at this time could exceed half a billion dollars.
Nevertheless, FSU has been very vocal about their discontent and in fact says they might leave, unless they are given the lion’s share of ACC revenue. This doesn’t make for a happy stable conference. Bringing Stanford, Cal, and SMU on board helps stabilize the conference, and in the event of FSU finding a way to leave, keeps the ACC a viable conference.
While it doesn’t close the gap with the SEC and B1G, it brings in more revenue for the ACC. According to this article, adding these new schools could bring in an additional $72M per year. The move also opens up California and Texas for the ACC Network, which could be an additional source of revenue for the conference.
It (slightly) increases the chance that Notre Dame fully joins the ACC. Notre Dame is a member of the ACC, fully in all sports but hockey which the ACC doesn’t compete in, and football, where Notre Dame is a partial member. While they have long prized their independent status, circumstances could force them into a conference. If things fall apart in their upcoming negotiations with NBC for a new TV deal, could Notre Dame join a conference, and would that conference be the ACC? Maybe. It’s a small chance most likely, but as the last big “brand” school unaffiliated, they are a prize worth pursuing.
College athletics is a mess. It a rational world, putting two west coast schools and a Texas school in a conference anchored on the east coast makes no sense. But such is a world we live in. The ACC had a choice to expand or perhaps die and they chose to expand. Time will tell, but I think they made the right choice.