What’s New
The Atlantic Coast Conference is adding three colleges to its membership — Southern Methodist University and the recently orphaned Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley — the conference announced on Friday. The three institutions will join the ACC in the 2024-25 academic year, bringing the conference to 18 members. Campus leaders approved the change on Friday morning in a 12-to-3 vote, several news outlets reported.
The Backdrop
The expansion is the latest development in a chaotic series of athletic-conference realignments as the major conferences consolidate in pursuit of more-lucrative broadcast deals.
The Pac-12 conference effectively collapsed last month, after five colleges — the Universities of Arizona, Oregon, Utah, and Washington as well as Arizona State University — left the conference en masse. With Stanford and Cal’s switch, the “conference of champions” will now consist of only two colleges. SMU is moving from the American Athletic Conference. After jumping among a few smaller leagues, the university will be in a power conference for the first time in almost 30 years.
Talks about the ACC expansion started in early August, but the conference ultimately delayed making a decision since it lacked the 12 votes needed for approval, the Associated Press reported. Clemson, Florida State, and North Carolina State Universities and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were said to have opposed the addition. Ultimately, N.C. State’s chancellor, Randy Woodson, flipped his vote, several news outlets reported.
“The N.C. State brand, and historical competitiveness of our programs, is already well recognized and established,” Woodson said in a written statement. “The addition of these outstanding universities gives us even greater opportunities to build on the Wolfpack’s national presence, which in turn will generate more long-term benefits for our student-athletes, our athletic programs, and our loyal fan base.”
The Stakes
Colleges that opposed the expansion cited long travel for teams and income disparities between ACC members and other conferences. The chair of North Carolina’s Board of Trustees released a statement on Thursday night objecting to the additions.
“Although we respect the academic excellence and the athletic programs of those institutions, the travel distances for routine in-conference competitive play are too great for this arrangement to make sense for our student-athletes, coaches, alumni, and fans,” the statement said. “Furthermore, the economics of this newly imagined transcontinental conference do not sufficiently address the income disparity ACC members face.”
Long, cross-country travel for games has sparked opposition to recent conference realignments. Experts told The Chronicle that the travel time will exacerbate a growing mental-health crisis among college athletes and will have detrimental effects on coursework as well. With the changes, coast-to-coast flights stand to become much more common for already time-strapped players.
What to Watch For
The ACC was a life raft for Stanford and Cal, and now the remaining two Pac-12 institutions, Oregon State University and Washington State University, will be left to either rebuild the conference or abandon it altogether.
With the ACC and the Big 10 at 18 members each and the Big 12 and Southeastern Conferences at 16 apiece starting next year, experts say the changes are also creating an environment that increasingly mimics professional leagues. That could make it harder for the National Collegiate Athletic Association to defend its effective ban on directly paying athletes.
Meanwhile, discord may continue among the ACC colleges that objected to the change. Florida State has threatened to leave the conference if it doesn’t receive more money; the addition of three colleges could significantly increase the pot of money the conference will divvy up among its members. ESPN reported that the expansion could add as much as $60 million in revenue to the conference’s coffers, though the new members will get only partial payouts for the next decade, while SMU probably won’t share in broadcast revenue at all.
