The Atlantic Coast Conference voted Friday to add Stanford, California and SMU next year, creating a landing spot for two more schools from the crumbling Pac-12 and creating a fourth superconference in major college sports.
The move gives the ACC a windfall for its current members.
“It is truly a day of change for the ACC,” Commissioner Jim Phillips said.
Beginning in August 2024, the league with Tobacco Road roots in North Carolina will increase the number of its football schools in most other sports to 17 and 18, respectively, with Notre Dame remaining independent of football.
The ACC needed 12 of its 15 members to approve the expansion, and the vote was not unanimous.
“I can tell you when we got off this call today, everyone was in really good shape and feeling really good about the process,” Phillips said.
North Carolina and Florida State both voted no. The Seminoles said the move 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,” Florida State athletic director Michael Alford said. “We look forward to generating 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.”
Like the Big Ten and 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 and Dallas in the heart of the Southwest to Northern California, home to Stanford and Cal. Notre Dame is currently the westernmost ACC school in South Bend, Indiana, with Louisville being the furthest west among football affiliates.
The ACC is the fourth league, joining the Southeastern Conference, the Big Ten and the Big 12, to have at least 16 football-playing members as of 2024.
The creation of the sprawling leagues has raised concerns about many issues, from the impact on athletes’ travel to the changing recruiting landscape to the lost rivalries that fans cherish and now face different targets when they want to cheer on their teams.
Stanford said it expects there will be no or minimal schedule changes for 22 of its 36 sports as it sets 2024 schedules.
“The ACC is really interested in using Dallas as a place for teams to come together and play games to minimize the impact of travel on both the eastern members as well as Cal and Stanford,” Cal Chancellor Carol told Christ reporters.
The move appears to signal an end to this wave of realignment among the country’s richest and most powerful conferences, after three years of turbulent turmoil reduced the so-called Power Five to four.
“We went from regional conferences to national conferences coast to coast,” Phillips said. “Either you’re busy or you’re left behind.”
It was a marriage of despair for Bay Area schools after the Pac-12 was picked apart by the Big Ten and Big 12.
“Conference affiliations and the broadcast revenue they generate provide important financial support for the broad range of sports that Stanford offers,” said Athletic Director Bernard Muir. “Joining the ACC will ensure the power conference’s competitive infrastructure and long-term media revenues, which are critical to the competition of our student-athletes.”
For the ACC, the addition of three schools will increase media rights revenue from its long-term contract with ESPN and allow the conference to pass along much of that new money to existing members.
New conference members typically – although not always – forego a full share of revenue for several years upon joining.
According to a person familiar with him, Cal and Stanford will receive a partial share of the ACC Tier 1 media revenue, estimated at about $25 million per year, for the next nine years before the final three years of the conference’s contract with ESPN will receive full payment under the terms and conditions. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because ACC and the schools have not disclosed finances.
Cal and Stanford receive a 30% share in the first seven years, followed by 70% in the eighth year and 75% in the ninth year before receiving the full amount, the person said.
Another person with direct knowledge of SMU’s decision said the Dallas school, which currently competes in the American Athletic Conference, would forego distribution of all ACC media rights for nine years. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the school did not make its strategy public.
SMU President R. Gerald Turner said the school’s revenue will increase over time and that ACC revenue will be part of the increase.
All three schools will now receive full revenue shares from the ACC Network, College Football Playoffs, bowl games and NCAA men’s basketball tournaments.
“They have the championships, the CFP fund coming in, and part of what they’ve created is an incentive plan that we’re all a part of,” Turner said, also referring to Stanford and Cal. “There are more ways to get funding than just the media plan.”
The ACC has generated record revenue but lags behind the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences and faces an even larger gap as new TV contracts take effect in those leagues. The ACC’s contract runs until 2036.
The ACC reported total revenue of nearly $617 million for the 2021-22 season, according to tax records. This included the distribution of an average of $39.4 million to full members, with Notre Dame, as an independent football club, receiving a partial share (around $17.4 million).
Still, the Big Ten reported total revenue of $845.6 million ($58 million average in school distributions), and the SEC reported revenue of about $802 million ($49.9 million) for the same period per school).
The ACC surpassed the Big 12 (by about $136 million) in total revenue and ranked third among the Power Five that season, even though the Big 12 schools received more money per school (about $43.6 million). dollars) since the league only had 10 members.
Fears about revenue led the ACC to announce plans to let schools keep more money, usually distributed evenly among league teams, based on their postseason success.
The sticking point in the expansion was how much of ESPN’s new money should go into the new performance bonus pool for three additional members and how much should be divided equally among the existing members.
Phillips declined to provide details but said a portion of the new revenue would go toward each of those buckets.
Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and North Carolina State had opposed expansion when conference presidents decided not to vote on adding the three schools three weeks ago. A person familiar with the vote told AP on condition of anonymity that the state of North Carolina had changed its stance.
Stanford and Cal become the ninth and 10th schools to tell the Pac-12 they are leaving the self-proclaimed Conference of Champions.
The Big Ten poached Oregon and Washington earlier this month. That came a little more than a year after Southern California and UCLA announced they would be leaving the Pac-12 in favor of the Big Ten in 2024. The Big 12 has poached four Pac-12 schools for next year: Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.
The Pac-12 is down to Oregon State and Washington State. Officials at both schools said their desired path forward is to rebuild the Pac-12, but without Stanford and Cal, that becomes more complicated. Joining the Mountain West is becoming more likely.
American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco released a statement saying the AAC would no longer pursue expansion with Oregon State and Washington.
Stanford and Cal have athletic programs with rich histories of producing Olympians, All-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 of Cal.
The Cardinal won the NCAA women’s basketball tournament in 2021 and won the Directors’ Cup, which measures the athletic department’s overall success, for the 26th time last year. It’s been harder for big-game rivals to get wins in football lately. Stanford is just 14-28 over the last four years, while the Bears have three winning seasons since 2010.
For SMU, the ACC marks a return to major conference football for the first time since the program was shut down by the NCAA in the early 1980s as part of sanctions against paying players.
While the schools are far removed from their new conference colleagues, they still share some similarities with smaller private schools like Duke, Wake Forest and Boston College, as well as flagship state schools like North Carolina and Virginia that make up the ACC.
“This is truly a great moment for the ACC,” Phillips said. “And I think there’s no doubt that this group will stick together as we welcome Cal, Stanford and SMU.”
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AP Sports Writer Josh Dubow contributed to this report.
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