We have wandered to the end of August without resolution of the Atlantic Coast Conference’s appraisal of Stanford, California and SMU as new members. Friday morning, sources tell Sports Illustrated, our long national realignment nightmare should culminate in a formal vote for inclusion or an informal rejection. It’s go or no-go time.
The only proper way to end this thing is with the addition of those schools to the league.
Since the Pac-12 dissolved Aug. 4 in an acidic solution of competitor avarice, TV predation and lousy internal leadership, four schools have been left twisting. Faced with the extinction of their 108-year-old conference, Stanford, Cal, Washington State and Oregon State have varying chances for power-conference survival. The two Bay Area schools have far more attractive profiles and, thus, better options—or at least one good option.
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That option is the ACC, which is the No. 3 conference in American college sports but has been undermined by internal bickering. The big football schools in the league want more money and have been carping about it for months, having been locked into an ESPN contract until 2036.
Now an improvement of that financial situation has been presented on a silver platter for those schools in the form of Stanford, Cal and SMU (which is bluntly trying to money-whip its way in from the American Athletic Conference). After commissioner Jim Phillips has been rolling boulders uphill for months to find ways to improve his league’s footing, he has finally found it—with the help of several league members.
Now it’s time for the Obstinate Four to accept that gift.
Those who have stood opposed to the addition of the three new members: Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina and North Carolina State. The league needs one of those four to flip from “no” to “yes” to move forward to 18 members. I’m sure the ACC would prefer unanimity, especially given the strife of recent months, but at this point it’s time to just push the thing through and be done.
The restless ACC members’ requests from the league office have been threefold: find us new revenue, reward competitive excellence with that revenue as opposed to even distribution among all members, and in so doing solidify the league. Adding these three schools checks those boxes.
The new money via ESPN for adding three schools would be $72 million.
Even after apportioning some of that to cover additional travel costs to and from the West Coast, there should be roughly $60 million of new money, much of which can be earmarked to reward programs that make the College Football Playoff and NCAA men’s basketball tournament, and advance in the tourneys.
Furthermore, expansion to 18 keeps pace with the behemoth Big Ten and outdoes the 16-member SEC and Big 12. While 18 is frankly too unwieldy to properly run a league, it does provide a hedge against losing members at a time when Florida State has openly discussed secession, Clemson is privately mulling it and others could look to hit the eject button as well. If the Big Ten or SEC launches a raid or someone gets the crazy idea to go independent, the ACC would still have a sustainable core.
Viewed in a vacuum, the idea of California schools joining an East Coast conference is entirely nonsensical. But College Sports Inc. left the common-sense vacuum last year when USC and UCLA bailed for the Big Ten, then doubled down on it this summer with Oregon and Washington doing the same. We aren’t going back.
Given that, the choice for Cal and Stanford in particular is this: Forfeit power-conference status—and the revenue that comes with it—and watch your competitiveness wither and die. (“On the vine,” to quote North Carolina crank Anson Dorrance.) While those schools are not operating at a high level in football or men’s basketball at present, they are powerhouses in Olympic sports and vital to the U.S. Olympic movement.
Damage those programs, and it will inevitably hit home in the medal count.
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Relocating to, say, the Mountain West Conference makes more sense geographically but is a competitive mismatch in the majority of sports. Stanford, the No. 1 all-sports athletic program in the U.S., will lose its edge (primarily in recruiting) if its Olympic sports are aligned with Wyoming, Utah State and the like.
Officials at the Bay Area schools and some ACC schools have dug into the travel issues. Many ACC sports—cross-country, swimming and diving, fencing, track and field, golf, rowing and men’s lacrosse—would be almost completely unaffected in terms of regular-season scheduling. Another group of sports would be facing one or zero trips west, while Cal, Stanford and SMU could be looking at three to five trips east. Some of the others are unavoidably more complicated.
These schools already are competing against one another in some sports as we speak. Examples: Cal’s women’s soccer team played at North Carolina Aug. 20, its men’s soccer team played at Wake Forest last Sunday and Duke’s women’s soccer team will play at Stanford on Saturday night.
At this point it seems quaint and naive to invoke academics, but there is that, too. Stanford is the gold standard for academic-athletic excellence. Cal is at the high end of public university standards. To think those attributes no longer matter in conference affiliation is a repudiation of college athletics and would be a refutation of the many high-minded academic schools in the ACC (including North Carolina, member of the Obstinate Four).
For Stanford, Cal and SMU, this conference relocation is without question the best available alternative. For the ACC, this expansion is also the best available alternative in terms of getting what school presidents have explicitly asked for. Hold the vote Friday and end the dithering. Expand the ACC.
