FYI from the NYT.........

Aug 24, 2023, 7:06 PM

Mandel: ACC adding Stanford, Cal and SMU makes perfect sense and no sense at all

In a world in which someone in a position of power in college sports bore any responsibility for the larger enterprise, the Atlantic Coast Conference would not be on the cusp of adding two schools from the Pacific time zone. Two California universities entrusted with the welfare of nearly 2,000 college athletes would not be groveling to send them flying across three time zones for their competitions.

But in an industry in which common sense went out the window years ago, in which the conference model has become “a complete disaster,” to use the words of Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, there is no such thing as a greater good — just greater TV money. And the increasingly misaligned wheels of realignment have made it such that a once-farcical idea — Stanford, Cal and SMU up and joining the ACC — has now reached the brink of becoming reality.

Call it a marriage of mutual desperation.

The ACC has been looking toward the West ever since the Pac-12’s implosion earlier this month. There is a reason commissioner Jim Phillips kept the door open these past couple of weeks, even after it became known that the presidents of four schools — Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina and NC State — opposed the idea. He must have had a reason to believe he could flip at least one of them to get the necessary 12 votes.

As with all things realignment, that carrot was money.

With Stanford and Cal scrounging to avoid a future with decimated budgets and mid-major schedules, they are willing to start with a greatly reduced share of the league’s revenue, just as Oregon and Washington did to get into the Big Ten. The ACC last year distributed nearly $40 million on average to its 14 full members. (Notre Dame gets roughly a half share.) Even 30 percent of that would be more than Stanford and Cal could expect to make in the AAC or Mountain West.

Meanwhile, SMU, having spent the past 30 years bouncing from the WAC to Conference USA to the AAC, is so desperate for Power 5 status that its boosters reportedly are willing to foot the bill for the school to forgo all of its TV revenue for the first seven years. No word on whether the ACC might counter and ask SMU to straight-up pay for an invitation.

Rhett Lashlee took over as SMU’s coach in 2022. (Raymond Carlin III / USA Today)
All of this may help the ACC address its own looming crisis. That $40 million-per-school figure, while candy right now for the left-behind Pac-12 schools, still falls at least $30 million behind the Big Ten’s and SEC’s expected payouts come 2025. Those conferences are entering into new, more lucrative TV contracts, while the ACC’s seven-year-old deal with ESPN runs through 2036, which means the gap will only widen without some radical solution.

“Staying in the ACC under the current situation, it’s hard to figure out how we remain competitive unless there was a major change in the revenue distribution in the conference,” FSU president Richard McCullough said at an Aug. 2 public board meeting.

Enter three incredibly unlikely saviors: Cal, Stanford and SMU.

One silver lining in that aforementioned ESPN deal is that the network must pay a pro-rata share for any new members. Per the ACC’s 2021-22 tax return, the league made $443 million in TV revenue, the equivalent of $29.5 million per school, a number expected to rise modestly each year. Let’s say it’s $31 million by 2024-25. That’s an extra $93 million in the bank.

If Stanford and Cal are willing to initially take 30 percent and SMU zero, that would leave a pool of $74 million in found money to distribute to the current schools, not even including a likely gain in ACC Network subscriber fees in San Francisco and Dallas.

If split equally among all 14 full members, that number barely moves the needle, especially given the schools will need to turn around and spend some of it on charter flights to the Bay Area. But the model being dangled in front of the four holdouts would disperse that money based on performance, per The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach, whether that’s on the field, in the Nielsen ratings or both. That’s on top of the conference previously announcing it will use a performance-based distribution model for the influx of College Football Playoff money expected to come its way in the 12-team format.

ACC seriously considering adding Stanford, Cal, SMU
So, all Florida State has to do is win at the same stratospheric level as its sense of self-importance, and there might be enough new money to shut its mouth for the time being. Plus keep Clemson happy as well.

It’s an overly convoluted solution to a self-inflicted crisis. But just like Cal and Stanford, it might be the league’s best option.

As for those Bay Area schools, it’s no stretch to say their entire athletic identity is dependent on the ACC coming through with those invites. Especially since the Big Ten, despite already adding four West Coast schools, appears to have no interest.

For Cal and Stanford, Power 5 affiliation is only marginally about football. If they dropped down to an FCS conference tomorrow, their already paltry attendance might barely be affected.

But having to join a Group of 5 conference would be a death knell for powerhouse teams like Stanford women’s basketball, a national champion two years ago, or Stanford baseball and softball, both of which reached their respective College World Series last year. Between them, Cal and Stanford produced six national championships in the Olympic sports just this past school year.

Without Power 5 membership, the schools would no longer be able to financially support those sports at the same level, and many elite national recruits would no longer want to play there. Hence, why North Carolina’s national championship women’s soccer coach, Anson Dorrance, said this week: “No way I want to share the glory of our conference with two schools that could do a very good job of recruiting against us.”

Jack Swarbrick calls state of college athletics 'a complete disaster'
Somehow this whole thing simultaneously makes perfect sense and no sense at all.

If the ACC adds Cal and Stanford, 10 of the 12 current Pac-12 schools will be spread among three Power 5 conferences (the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC), none of which had teams in the Pacific or Mountain time zones until this year. All because the only leaders who exert any real influence in college athletics work not for the universities but for ESPN and Fox.

Because the Pac-12 could not convince major media companies to pay it quite as many millions as they do the Big 12 or ACC, Stanford’s and Cal’s athletes might soon be traveling to Pittsburgh instead of Pullman.

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FYI from the NYT.........

Re: FYI from the NYT.........

Only makes sense when you realize what clueless losers run the ACC

Good read tgr61

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