ACC presidents have postponed a meeting scheduled for Monday regarding a possible expansion of the conference, sources confirmed to CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd, after an apparent shooting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shut down the campus for several hours. In the meantime, the police have given the UNC students the all-clear and protection on site has been lifted.
Before the postponement, ACC officials should address the potential addition of Stanford, Cal and SMU to the league. With the addition of the three schools to the conference, the ACC would have a total of 18 members in football, counting Notre Dame’s status as a partial member. Stanford, Cal and SMU have been linked to the ACC as expansion targets for most of the last month. Dynamics regarding additions have varied during this period, although talks of adding schools at a discounted rate have recently picked up steam.
It was reported that the addition of the three schools could bring the ACC an additional $72 million annually, with Cal and Stanford accepting limited revenue sharing — estimated at about 30%, or about $8 million per school. SMU, backed by its affluent donor base, would forego distribution for at least seven years in order to have a seat at the table in the power conference landscape.
The ACC requires a minimum of 12 out of 15 member schools to vote “yes” in order for a single expansion candidate to be accepted into the conference. Yahoo! Sports previously reported that only four league members — Florida State, Clemson, UNC and NC State — opposed the expansion, meaning only one dissenting school’s vote would need to be reversed for the expansion to get the green light.
The potential for ACC expansion comes after several prominent members of the league raised concerns about the growing financial rift between the Big Ten and the SEC — both of which have landed lucrative new media rights deals over the past three years — as well as college football -Landscape is evolving. Florida State leaders have been particularly vocal in this regard, as some university trustees considered a possible break with the ACC during a public meeting in early August.
The ACC is tied to a contract with ESPN that runs until 2036. The conference distributed approximately $40 million per school for calendar year 2022, but escalators could increase that number in the future.
Should the ACC vote to expand, it would be the last conference to grow in the current cycle of realignment. From late July through early August, the Big 12 and Big Ten each added more schools. Those moves led to six more Pac-12 schools leaving the league after USC and UCLA announced their impending departures to the Big Ten last summer. Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah joined the Big 12, while Oregon and Washington accepted invitations to the Big Ten. All of these measures will come into force in 2024.
Moves from the ACC could also feed into ongoing discussions about the format of the college football playoffs as the team prepares to expand from four to 12 teams beginning in the 2024 season. Previously, the agreed model would see the field consist of the six top-ranked conference champions and six at-larges, but a realignment could thwart those plans. CFP commissioners will hold a previously scheduled meeting in Dallas on Wednesday, and there is impetus to move to a model that only guarantees access to the top five ranked champions and seven big teams. according to Yahoo Sports.
Stanford and Cal are currently two of the four remaining Pac-12 schools, along with Oregon State and Washington State. SMU is currently a member of the American Athletic Conference. Should SMU gain membership of the ACC, it would be the Mustangs’ return to a major conference for the first time since participating in the Southwest Conference, which played its last football season before disbanding in the 1995-96 school year.