The Atlantic Coast Conference voted Friday to add Stanford, California and SMU next year, providing a landing spot for two more schools from the disintegrated Pac-12 and creating a fourth super conference in major college sports.
The measure provides the ACC with a revenue windfall for its current members.
“It really is a transformative day for the ACC,” said Commissioner Jim Phillips.
Starting in August 2024, the league with roots on Tobacco Road in North Carolina will increase its number of soccer schools to 17 and 18 in most other sports, and Notre Dame will remain independent soccer.
The ACC needed 12 of its 15 members to pass the extension and the vote was not unanimous.
“I can tell you that when we wrapped up that call today, everyone was in a very good place and felt very good about the process,” Phillips said.
Both North Carolina and the state of Florida voted against it. The Seminoles said the measure did not fully address their concerns about the ACC’s revenue distribution model.
“All three schools are outstanding academic and athletic institutions, and our vote against expansion is not reflected in their quality,” said Florida State Athletic Director Michael Alford. “We look forward to earning new revenue through ACC’s success incentive initiative, based on our continued excellence. We are grateful to the league for continuing to listen to our concerns.”
As the big ten and the big 12, The ACC will now have members in at least three time zones.
It will stretch from Boston in the Northeast to Miami in South Florida, to Dallas in the heart of the Southwest, and as far north as California, where Stanford and Cal reside. Notre Dame is currently the westernmost ACC school in South Bend, Indiana, Louisville being the westernmost among football members.
The ACC becomes the fourth league, joining the Southeastern Conference, the Big Ten, and the Big 12, to have at least 16 member soccer players, as of 2024.
The formation of sprawling leagues has raised concerns about everything from the impact on athlete travel to changes recruitment landscape and the lost rivalries treasured by Fans now face different fates. if they want to cheer on their teams.
Stanford said it expects 22 of its 36 sports to see little or no scheduling changes as the 2024 schedules are set.
“The ACC is really interested in using Dallas as a place where teams can come together to have games to minimize the impact of travel on both eastern members and Cal and Stanford,” Cal Chancellor Carol told reporters. Christ.
The measure seems to signal the end of this wave of realignment among the richest and most powerful conferences in the country after three years of turbulent movement that has reduced the so-called Power Five to four.
“We’ve gone from regional conferences to coast-to-coast national conferences,” Phillips said. “Either you take care or you stay behind.”
For Bay Area schools, it was a union of despair after the Pac-12 was torn apart by the Big Ten and Big 12.
“Conference affiliations and the broadcast revenue they generate provide key financial support for the wide range of sports that Stanford offers,” said athletic director Bernard Muir. “Joining the ACC will ensure the competitive infrastructure of the Power Conference and the long-term media revenue that is critical for our student-athletes to compete.”
For the ACC, adding three schools will increase media rights revenue from its long-term deal with ESPN and allow the conference to distribute much of that new money to existing members.
New conference members typically (but not always) forego a full portion of the membership for several years after joining.
Cal and Stanford will receive a partial share of the ACC’s Tier 1 media revenue, estimated at about $25 million annually, for the next nine years before receiving a full payment in the final three years of the conference’s agreement with ESPN. , according to a person familiar with the terms. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the ACC and the schools have not released the financials.
Cal and Stanford will get a 30% stake in the first seven years, followed by 70% in year eight and 75% in year nine before getting the full amount, the person said.
Another person with direct knowledge of the SMU decision said the Dallas school currently in the American Athletic Conference will waive all distribution of media rights from the ACC for nine years. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the school would not make its strategy public.
SMU President R. Gerald Turner said the school’s revenue will be higher over time and ACC’s revenue will be part of the increase.
All three schools will immediately earn all of the revenue from the ACC network, college football playoff units, bowl games and NCAA men’s basketball tournaments.
“There’s the championships, the CFP fund that’s coming in, part of what they’ve created is an incentive plan that we’re all in,” Turner said, also referring to Stanford and Cal. “There are more ways to get funding than the plan media”.
ACC has been generating record revenue, however, it trails the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences and faces an even bigger gap as those leagues have new television deals in place. The ACC agreement runs through 2036.
The ACC reported nearly $617 million in total revenue for the 2021-22 season, according to tax documents. That included distributing an average of $39.4 million to full members, with Notre Dame receiving a partial share (approximately $17.4 million) as independent football.
However, the Big Ten reported $845.6 million in total revenue (an average of $58 million in school distributions) and the SEC reported about $802 million in revenue ($49.9 million per school). during that same period.
The ACC surpassed the Big 12 (by approximately $136 million) in total revenue to rank third among the Power Five that season, even though the Big 12 schools received more money per school (approximately $43.6 million) and the league had only 10 members.
Anguish over income led the ACC to announce plans for schools to keep more money based on their postseason success that has generally been distributed evenly among teams in the league.
The sticking point over the expansion had been how much of ESPN’s new money for three more members would go into the new performance bonus pool and how much would be shared equally among existing members.
Phillips declined to provide details, but said some of the new revenue would go to each of those groups.
Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and the state of North Carolina had opposed the expansion when the conference presidents decided not to vote three weeks ago by adding the three schools. A person familiar with the vote, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the AP that the state of North Carolina changed her position.
Stanford and Cal are the 9th and 10th schools to report the Pac-12. they leave the self-styled Conference of Champions.
The Big Ten drew Oregon and Washington earlier this month. This came just over a year after Southern California and UCLA announced they were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in 2024. The Big 12 have stolen four Pac-12 schools for next year: Arizona, Arizona State , Colorado and Utah. .
The Pac-12 is narrowed down to the state of Oregon and the state of Washington. Officials at both schools have said rebuilding the Pac-12 is the desired path forward, but without Stanford and Cal that becomes more complicated. Joining Mountain West becomes more likely.
American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco issued a statement saying the AAC would no longer seek to expand with Oregon and Washington state.
Stanford and Cal have athletic programs with a rich history of producing Olympians, stars, and hall of famers, including Super Bowl-winning quarterback John Elway and Stanford swimmer Katie Ledecky and NFL MVP. Aaron Rodgers and swimmer Missy Franklin from Cal.
The Cardinal won the NCAA women’s basketball tournament in 2021 and last year won the Directors’ Cup for the 26th time, which measures the overall success of the athletic department. Lately it has been more difficult to get football wins for the rivals of the Big Game. Stanford is just 14-28 over the past four years, while the Bears have three winning seasons since 2010.
For SMU, the ACC marks a return to major conference soccer for the first time since the NCAA shut down the program as part of player-paying penalties in the early 1980s.
While the schools are a far cry from their new conference peers, they do have some similarities to smaller private schools like Duke, Wake Forest and Boston College, along with flagship state schools like North Carolina and Virginia, which make up the ACC.
“This is a great time for the ACC, it really is,” Phillips said. “And I think there’s no question that when we welcome Cal, Stanford and SMU, that group will be united.”
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AP sportswriter Josh Dubow contributed to this report.
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AP College Football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll
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