In a dramatic reversal that required weeks of negotiating and major financial concessions, Atlantic Coast Conference presidents voted Friday to admit Stanford, California and Southern Methodist University as new members in all sports for 2024, sources tell Sports Illustrated.
Since the Pac-12 splintered Aug. 4, the two Bay Area schools have been adrift and looking for a future home. The ACC had been in discussions with Stanford and Cal since that time, but for three weeks the league did not have the necessary 12 of 15 members in favor of adding the Cardinal and Golden Bears. A straw poll of presidents on Aug. 9 revealed that four schools in particular were opposed: Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and North Carolina State.
SMU, a member of the American Athletic Conference, also threw its hat in the ACC ring in August. The Mustangs were described as a lower priority at the time but made up ground.
All three schools eventually won over enough ACC members by volunteering to enter the league at drastically reduced revenue shares. That, combined with the increased earnings they would bring in via the league’s media-rights agreement with ESPN, were the final factors in tilting the votes in their favor.
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As Sports Illustrated reported last week, the ACC stands to earn more than $70 million in additional revenue from ESPN by adding the three schools. That money kicks in automatically due to pro-rata increases already agreed to in the network’s contract with the league, according to a person familiar with the figures. Some of that would go to offset increased travel costs associated with adding schools on the other side of the country, but the majority of the amount to be distributed has been the main sticking point throughout the negotiations, and the focus of much of the recent conversations.
Stanford and Cal would come in earning a reduced portion of the ACC’s annual average total distribution of roughly $35-40 million—a 30% share, according to sources, which would equate to about $8 million per school. That percentage would escalate over multiple years. SMU, according to sources, would forego its share of the media revenue altogether for multiple years and essentially come into the league earning only from non-media rights distributions such as bowl payouts, College Football Playoff distributions and NCAA tournament units. The money all three new entrants would be forfeiting would then go into a pool to be distributed as part of a so-called “success initiative” that will provide financial reward to ACC schools based on their teams’ performance in postseason play in revenue sports.
In mid-August, a source described the aspiring entrants as facing a “third and 15” challenge of gaining entry to the ACC, but advocates stressed hope remained. Sure enough, the outlook started shifting last week and the supporting votes coalesced from there, sources say.
Commissioner Jim Phillips had been advocating for the two Pac-12 schools, as had ACC members Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Georgia Tech and Louisville. As SI reported earlier this month, those schools were joined in lobbying efforts from outside the league by notable Stanford faculty member Condoleezza Rice (the former U.S. Secretary of State) and alum Jerry Yang (the co-founder of Yahoo), among others. Former President and Texas governor George W. Bush weighed in on behalf of SMU. Representatives from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee also lobbied ACC officials in support of Stanford and Cal, which are two of the four biggest producers of American Olympic athletes.
The Cardinal and Golden Bears will face the same—if not worse—cross-country difficulties as fellow Pac-12 schools who are leaving for the Big Ten. All the ACC schools are located in the Eastern Time Zone, with Louisville the closest to Palo Alto and Berkeley at a distance of more than 2,300 miles. But with the league they’ve belonged to for more than a century stripped of eight members and the Big Ten unwilling to add them, Stanford and Cal opted for the best alternative to remain financially viable in big-time athletics.
The other options were not palatable for the schools. They ranged from trying to cobble together a rebuilt Pac-12, to joining the Mountain West Conference, to football independence to de-emphasizing the sport. At a Stanford athletic meeting Wednesday, stakeholders were told the school was pushing hard to make the ACC move a reality.
The move drives a further stake into the Pac-12, which will now be down to just Oregon State and Washington State after the 2023-24 academic year. Those two would seem to be prime acquisition options for the Mountain West, but there are considerable reservoirs of money attached to the Pac-12 that could be worth fighting to keep the name of the league alive.
The ACC’s bold Bay Area additions unfolded against a backdrop of friction within the league. FSU has publicly expressed its dissatisfaction with the current revenue distribution and threatened to leave well before the conference’s media-rights contract expires in 2036. That would come at enormous cost, financially and politically, but the Seminoles seem to be up for the fight.
While the Aug. 15 league deadline for departing by the 2024-25 academic year passed without activity, league members remained on edge regarding FSU—and its football-centric cohort, Clemson. A source described the two as “very connected” on the future of the ACC and their place in it, albeit with “very different PR strategies,” as the Clemson leadership has largely avoided publicly voicing its discontent.
Two ACC sources said earlier this week they would not be surprised if FSU made a formal declaration in the near future to leave the league for 2025-26—perhaps as soon as the coming days. An FSU source cautioned that “nothing is imminent,” however, and that no board meetings are scheduled in Tallahassee to discuss conference realignment.
The potential for added media-rights revenue and a larger pool of performance-based money might be enough to quell the restlessness at Florida State, at least for the time being.
For the ACC as a whole, these additions provide further numeric stability in case of departures from the current membership. They also serve as a counterpoint to criticism that the league has been a passive realignment spectator while the Big 12 has aggressively expanded. ACC leadership had, in fact, been appraising potential acquisitions of Pac-12 members for about a year behind the scenes before entering into more specific talks as that league splintered.
Finances were the biggest factor for several ACC schools to vote yes to expansion, but the academic component of these additions resonated with some members as well. Sources also say Phillips and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick were particularly outspoken about wanting to align with two academically prestigious schools. Per the U.S. News & World Report’s national university rankings, Stanford is the top university that plays big-time football and Cal is tied with UCLA as the highest-ranked public school in that realm.
Richard Johnson contributed to this report.
