ACC meeting on Stanford, Cal, SMU rescheduled for Friday: Sources
By Stewart Mandel and Nicole Auerbach
10m ago
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ACC presidents will meet Friday to discuss and potentially vote on the additions of Cal, Stanford and SMU, two league sources and one industry source told The Athletic on Thursday.
The conference had postponed a planned meeting earlier in the week following Monday’s fatal shooting of a professor on North Carolina’s campus.
The ACC has been discussing potential expansion since shortly after the Pac-12 lost six of its 10 remaining members in late July and early August, putting that conference’s future in jeopardy. The ACC needed 12 of 15 members to support expansion, but a straw poll taken in mid-August came up one vote short, with Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina and NC State opposed.
In the weeks since, commissioner Jim Phillips has presented various financial models aimed at achieving the necessary votes. As part of the ACC’s long-term deal with ESPN, the network must pay a full pro-rata share for any new members.
Multiple conference sources said SMU is willing to accept no ACC media rights revenue for at least seven years, and Stanford and Cal would begin at around 30 percent, freeing up a pool of more than $70 million of new money to be distributed among the current members starting in 2024-25. Cal and Stanford’s shares would escalate annually over 12 years until they reach full membership.
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.
That new pool of money is expected to be used to reward schools for on-field performance in a new revenue-distribution system, helping the schools that invest heavily in football (such as Florida State and Clemson) to work toward closing the financial gap with their peers in the SEC and Big Ten. The ACC is expected to reward schools for College Football Playoff participation, conference championships and other benchmarks.
Cal, Stanford and SMU would be required to sign the ACC’s grant of rights, which runs through 2036. Though they would receive either no or partial media rights revenue, the three members would still receive other league revenue tied to the CFP and the NCAA tournament.
