ACC adding Stanford, Cal, SMU feels like a new low in college sports

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The most honest thing that will be said about the ACC’s nonsensical expansion gambit that was formalized Friday comes from deep in the heart of Texas: Pony Up.

That’s the mantra from proud new ACC member SMU, but it’s also the ethos that describes exactly what kind of Ponzi scheme the league just ran on college athletics. 

In a transparent, desperate, pathetic attempt to take the crumbs of conference realignment and act like they were prepared by a Michelin-starred chef, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips announced Friday that the additions of Stanford, California and SMU would “strengthen the league in all possible ways.” 

It’s objectively untrue, but the cost of such shamelessness wasn’t steep: A few more million in television money for each existing ACC school, and perhaps a few more in performance bonuses that will shut Florida State up at least until it makes financial sense for it to bolt to the SEC, Big Ten or some state of private-equity-funded independence.

In other words, the ACC did not expand because Stanford, Cal and SMU offer competitive upgrades in the sports that matter (they don’t) or because they add equal revenue value to the existing television contract (they don’t) or because they make geographical and logistical sense for a conference that exists exclusively in the Eastern time zone (they don’t). 

The ACC expanded because there was a pool of television money ESPN was contractually required to give it because of conference expansion, and most of that money will be hoarded by the existing members while the newbies subsidize their athletic departments in other ways. In SMU’s case, the desperation to get into a power conference was so strong, it reportedly agreed to forego a media-rights distribution for its first nine years as a member of the ACC. 

In other words, SMU is going to literally pay to play in its new league despite being competitively irrelevant in its old one. There will be three presidential elections by the time SMU gets a dollar from television.

Even in a college sports industry that struggles to find the bottom, this feels like a new low. A healthy industry does not do this. A thriving conference does not run toward this. And yet, it all feels so inevitable because nobody expects anything better from the college presidents and conference commissioners, who have made a series of decisions that codify all the things they say they don’t want college sports to be. 

Everything that has happened over the last year in conference realignment was a choice. Schools made choices, conferences made choices and television networks made choices that have led to the Pac-12 being wiped off the map, the Big Ten becoming a league that stretches from New Jersey to Oregon and the Atlantic Coast Conference going to the Pacific to add two football programs that have gone a combined 20-38 since 2020.

Ostensibly, this happened because the Pac-12 did not have a good enough television deal to stay together. And yet those same television networks will end up paying hundreds of millions of dollars for 10 of the 12 teams to play in other leagues, while making everything about how those schools operate incredibly more complicated and expensive. 

But given such a colossal failure by the Pac-12, it’s hard to blame Cal and Stanford for agreeing to be the financial supplicants of a second-rate football conference when their only other choice was being a member of a third-rate conference. Cal and Stanford did not ask for the Pac-12 to implode, and their resulting options were all different degrees of bad.

You can't even blame SMU, whose wealthy boosters have decided that buying their way into a  power conference was a better way to go than actually doing the work of building solid programs and winning, like many of their peers who made a similar jump. This is America, after all. Bribes get a lot of things done. 

But the funny part about all of this is, the ACC doesn’t actually look or act like a conference that is going to be part of the power structure much longer. 

When you get these expansion announcements, they are always accompanied by public statements that whitewash the backroom deals and internal politics that got the decision over the line. But this time, we got a statement from North Carolina’s trustees on Thursday night before the official vote, saying the “strong majority” of the board was in opposition and a confirmation from the chancellor Friday that UNC was a no. Florida State president Richard McCullough also issued a statement saying there were "many complicated factors that led us to vote no," while Clemson's welcome announcement had all the warmth of a ice cream buffet.

Stop and think about that. For different reasons, North Carolina and Florida State are the two biggest brands in the ACC and the two schools that could easily fit into either the SEC or Big Ten. The third most-valuable brand is Clemson because of its recent football national championships. 

All three were opposed to this expansion because they realize that even a few more million dollars wouldn’t meaningfully cut into the financial gap with the Big Ten and SEC, while increasing travel for non-revenue sports and adding nothing competitively in football. 

And yet the ACC went through with it anyway, gaining enough support to push it through reportedly when NC State flipped from a no to a yes.

What does that tell you? It should tell you that the mediocre middle of the ACC cannot count on its football stalwarts to still be around in 2036 when its current TV deal expires. It should also tell you that the unease Florida State and Clemson have felt with the direction of the ACC cannot really be solved without an eventual divorce. There are no more cards to play to make the situation any better than it is now. 

Even if Clemson and FSU can’t see a way out contractually in the next few years, their leaders understand that college football is not going to look in the 2030s like it does now. This round of conference realignment may be done for a little while, but it’s only a pause until the next round of television contracts comes up for renewal. 

The existential problem with college sports is that unlike the pro leagues, conferences and schools treat each other like competitors rather than business partners when it comes to the big stuff. Instead of making decisions that put the interests of the overall business first, college presidents and commissioners focus on what’s good for their fiefdoms and make the necessary apologies later. 

That system has created a 40-year see-saw of winners and losers, which isn’t going to end until the most logical evolution: A model where the schools with the most television value band together and sell one big package to the networks for a huge payday, like the NFL does. 

Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina and Miami would be part of such a structure. The rest of the ACC might not.

And to prepare for that day, the ACC on Friday added two schools in California that their supposed peer leagues didn't want and one in Texas that had to buy its way in. No word yet if they'll be handing out ski masks at the press conference.