Conference realignment never truly ends, it just takes a week off.
As the smoke cleared around the dying husk of the Pac-12, all eyes turned to the ACC as the next Power Five conference with some big decisions to make. Florida State has made it clear it’s unhappy with its current situation and it seems like they and Clemson could figure out a way to walk if the right deal emerged. While FSU pumped the brakes on its demands, it’s obvious that the league needs to do something to keep up with the Joneses.
That could be where Stanford, Cal, and SMU come in. The two Pac-12 schools in California and AAC school in Texas don’t make a lot of geographic sense for the Atlantic Coast Conference, but geography stopped mattering in college football partnerships a long time ago. Rumors have swirled that the trio of schools could be invited to join the ACC any day now. If that does happen, it stands to reason that the league and its member schools will benefit financially.
According to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports, financial models shared with league administrators show that adding the three schools could bring in an additional $72 million in revenue from ESPN.
Per Dellenger, another attractive part of the potential partnership is that Stanford and Cal have proposed taking a “significantly reduced revenue distribution for multiple years” while SMU is proposing not taking any revenue distribution “for as many as seven years.” That would mean much of that new media rights revenue would go to the existing ACC schools, a big boost to concerns that members like Florida State have.
The ACC member schools are reportedly deciding between admitting all three schools, just Cal and Stanford, just SMU, or none of them.
Per Yahoo! Sports, a straw poll on expansion taken on August 9 fell one vote short of passing. Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina, and NC State were the dissenters.
Meanwhile, according to the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Michael Silver, Cal, Stanford, and SMU are finalizing deals to join the ACC in football and men’s and women’s basketball. We’ll likely find out one way or another in the coming days.
