The Atlantic Coast Conference is expanding from its Eastern roots.
The ACC brain trust, presidents and chancellors met early Friday morning and voted to add three schools, Stanford, Cal and SMU, sources told ESPN. It will bring the league to 18 members, 17 will play football full time in the league. The additions are in all sports and will begin in the 2024-25 school year.
The moves have been a hot button topic and subject of much scrutiny over the past month, as commissioner Jim Phillips worked around the clock to appease a group of members eager to add the schools and others seeking more revenue. The protracted process ultimately concluded with the ACC growing amid a backdrop that brought to light some of the fundamental tensions within the league.
The move unfolded in an unusual fashion, as typically votes in league matters are cast as unanimous and a formality when the presidents get together to decide on a verdict. The ACC needed 12 of 15 votes. Heading into the meeting on Friday morning it was up in the air whether or not the league had enough votes, a significant change from how conference expansion typically works.
In a straw poll more than three weeks ago, four ACC schools dissented, Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina, and NC State. One of them needed to change their minds completely for the vote to pass and all eyes entered the meeting focused on NC State chancellor Randy Woodson.
It was a 12-3 vote on Friday with NC State flipping, multiple sources confirmed to ESPN’s Andrea Adelson.
The focus on Woodson gained momentum Thursday night when members of the University of North Carolina’s board of trustees issued a statement to voice their displeasure of the trio of additions. That move was perceived around the ACC as a political statement to be sure that UNC chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz did not flip his vote.
UNC and NC State did not need to be tied at the hip, but some of the skepticism around Woodson’s vote came from the political ramifications of not being aligned with North Carolina.
The ACC joins the ranks of a rapidly changing collegiate landscape. Starting next year, the Big Ten will have 18 teams and the Big 12 and SEC will have 16. The move leaves the Pac-12 barely hanging on with just two remaining programs, Washington State and Oregon State, a continued downward spiral that has included the league losing eight teams since late July.
Cal, Stanford, and SMU will come at a significant discount, which will help create a revenue pool to be distributed among ACC members. SMU is expected to come in for nine years with no broadcast media revenue, sources told ESPN, and both Cal and Stanford were expected to receive 30% shares of ACC payouts.
That money being withheld is expected to create an annual pot of revenue between $50 million and $60 million. Some of the money will be divided evenly among the 14 full-time members and Notre Dame, while another portion will be put in a pool designated for success initiatives that reward programs that win.
The move delivers a second chance to the athletic departments at Stanford and Cal, which were left twisting in the wind amid the Pac-12’s disintegration. Stanford has an athletic department that is considered the cream of the crop in college athletics. Both will face increased travel costs, which will significantly impact a Cal athletic department that is currently facing hundreds of millions in debt.
For SMU, the decision to forgo television revenue gave them a place in a major conference and the school will lean heavily on its wealthy boosters to help it stay afloat and relevant until revenue comes in. It marks a significant moment for the school’s climb back from the death penalty for major infractions that led to the school not playing football in 1987 and 1988. SMU did not return to a bowl game until 2009 after the penalties and a 21-year layoff.
Even with the vote going through, the nearly monthlong back-and-forth saga to decide on the addition illuminated the divisions in the ACC. Both Florida State and Clemson have spoken out publicly about how the revenue gap between the ACC and the Big Ten and SEC needs to close immediately.
While those schools had not been supportive of the additions heading into the final meeting, the decision does give them access to millions more in annual revenue if they succeed on the field. With the ACC television contract running through 2036, the past few weeks have shined a light on the uncertainty that will linger into the upcoming years.
Florida State officials have been particularly passionate about leaving the league, with president Richard McCullough saying the Seminoles would “very seriously” consider jumping ship if the revenue-distribution model did not change significantly. This move by the ACC does not appear to change that tenor.
For other schools in the ACC, the three new schools represent both the addition of quality academic institutions and safety in numbers. Cal and Stanford were the last major conference schools that offered significant value remaining on the board.
