ACC adds Stanford, California and SMU in latest college sports realignment
The ACC’s board of directors voted Friday morning to add Stanford, California and SMU to its ranks beginning with the 2024-25 school year, the latest example that conference realignment in college athletics is being driven by television money.
“We are thrilled to welcome three world-class institutions to the ACC, and we look forward to having them compete as part of our amazing league,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement. “Cal, SMU and Stanford will be terrific members of the ACC and we are proud to welcome their student-athletes, coaches, staff and entire campus community, alumni and fans.”
Under the terms of the ACC’s television contract with ESPN, which runs through 2036, the network must pay the ACC $24 million annually for each new team added. According to multiple reports, longtime Pac-12 members Stanford and Cal will receive reduced television-revenue shares over their first nine years in the ACC, while SMU will receive no TV money at all in that span. That shortfall reportedly will be covered by the school’s boosters, who see the move to the ACC as a step up from the American Athletic Conference, which has a television contract that pays its schools around $7 million annually.
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“This is a transformational day for SMU,” school president R. Gerald Turner said in the ACC’s statement. “Becoming a member of the ACC will positively impact all aspects of the collegiate experience on the Hilltop and will raise SMU’s profile on a national level. … Joining the ACC is an historic milestone in our institution’s history, and the start of a new chapter in SMU Athletics.”
In the wake of other conference moves, the ACC needed to find a way to increase the television revenue each school receives or it faced the prospect of losing its biggest football programs to the SEC and the Big Ten, which pay their schools far more than the ACC. Increasing its membership to 18 — and giving the majority of the money that ESPN will pay for expansion to the conference’s existing members — does that, though the added revenue will not eliminate the shortfall between the ACC and the more lucrative conferences.
According to ESPN, the new revenue will be split into two pots: one shared equally by the ACC’s existing members and another that will go to the programs that win the most in football and men’s basketball and attract the most attention as measured by television ratings.
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According to the Action Network’s Brett McMurphy, the ACC also needed to find three new teams because ESPN is allowed to renegotiate its contract if the conference’s membership drops below 15. Increasing the number of conference teams to 18 provides a bulwark if Clemson and Florida State — the programs most desired by other conferences — and one other school decide to depart.
The ACC needed 12 of its 15 members to vote to approve expansion, which is exactly the number it received. Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina voted no.
“There are many complicated factors that led us to vote no,” Florida State President Richard McCullough said in a statement. “That said, we welcome these truly outstanding institutions and look forward to working with them as our new partners in the Atlantic Coast Conference.”
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Stanford and Cal were two of the four Pac-12 schools left behind after the rest of the conference announced departures for the Big Ten (USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington) or Big 12 (Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State) beginning next school year. Faced with the prospect of trying to work something out with the less-prestigious Mountain West Conference or becoming a geographic oddity in the ACC, the two schools chose the latter, hoping that eventually the move will pan out financially. Oregon State and Washington State are the only schools committed to the Pac-12 beyond this academic year.
In the ACC’s statement, James E. Ryan, the Virginia president who is chair of the conference’s board of directors, said the league will “focus on minimizing travel burdens for student-athletes.” Starting next school year, the ACC will stretch from Boston to Miami to Texas to the Bay Area.
Phillips told reporters Friday afternoon that the Stanford and Cal football and basketball teams will make three to four trips to the East Coast each season, playing close-together opponents on the same trip when possible. Current ACC football teams will travel to the West Coast every other year, while current basketball teams will travel there twice every four years, playing Stanford and Cal on the same trip.
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One idea reportedly being floated to ease travel for the ACC’s nonrevenue sports — everything except football and basketball — is using SMU’s location in Dallas as a hub where teams from the East Coast and West Coast can come together to play.
Stanford’s athletes compete in 36 sports. The ACC sponsors just 28, meaning some of the Cardinal’s athletic teams — men’s and women’s water polo, men’s and women’s sailing, women’s beach volleyball and women’s squash, to name a few — will be unaffected by the move.
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