Stanford, Cal, SMU Could Officially Join ACC This Week (Reports)
For more than two weeks, Bay Area rivals Stanford and Cal have been trying to determine their own conference future since the Pac-12 lost Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah in a series of defections that effectively marked the end of the conference, leaving only four schools behind. Neither the Cardinal nor the Golden Bears have the sort of football program that attracts big dollars, but both are extremely successful in Olympic sports, including swimming, with current representatives and alumni of the two schools comprising large portions of most U.S. Olympic teams.
The Atlantic Coast Conference had emerged as a possible destination, even though Stanford and Cal are located hundreds of miles away from the nearest ACC university. Twelve out of 15 current ACC schools must approve any addition to the conference, and the opposition of four schools kept the league from holding an official vote.
But now, an agreement on revenue distribution has paved the way for Stanford, Cal and American Athletic Conference team SMU to potentially move into the ACC after all. Such a move could be imminent.
Multiple reports, including ESPN and Yahoo Sports, explained that these new schools added to the conference would sign the ACC’s Grant of Rights and long-term agreement with ESPN but would not receive an equal share of television revenue. Cal and Stanford would start out getting about 30% of television revenue most ACC schools would earn while SMU would go without earning cash from media rights for seven years.
For the duo of west coast schools, that sum is still an improvement over the current Pac-12 payout while increasing the take-home for current ACC schools. It’s expected that all three new additions would eventually become full-earning members of the league by the time the television contract reaches its conclusion.
Writer Michael Silver reports that a deal for Cal, Stanford and SMU to join the ACC is already done. He wrote Wednesday evening on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the three schools were finalizing an agreement to join the ACC in the three highest-revenue sports, football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball.
The ACC’s long-term television contract runs through 2036, leaving schools such as football powers Clemson and Florida State with limited earning potential. While a potential agreement with Cal, Stanford and SMU to join the conference might appear questionable, the financial bottom line for existing ACC schools would improve. Such is the landscape of college athletics that the best-possible outcome for a school involves joining a conference based 2000 miles away.