Over the weekend, I wrote about the crazy world of conference realignment in college athletics. If you missed it, I’ll catch you up: the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences are poaching the once-great Pac-12 conference. As a result, the Big Ten will have 18 teams in 2024, while the Big 12 will have 16 teams. By contrast, the Pac-12 will have only four teams unless the conference does something drastic.
These actions follow the expansion of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), which will welcome Texas and Oklahoma into its fold next year, growing the conference to 16 teams. The SEC had already stretched the definition of “Southeastern” when it added Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012; however, there’s no word on whether the SEC will rebrand itself as the Southeastern-ish Conference next year. But stretching the definition of “Southeast” to include Missouri and Oklahoma is nothing compared to what the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is considering.
Common sense would tell us that the phrase “Atlantic Coast” in the ACC’s name would suggest that teams would come from states along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet the ACC already includes teams from Kentucky (University of Louisville) and Indiana (Notre Dame), so why let some silly thing like the geography in the conference’s name limit it?
The Athletic reported on Monday that sources within the conference say that the ACC is considering expanding by decimating the Pac-12 even further. That’s right: the Atlantic Coast Conference is looking at teams from a conference on the Pacific coast, namely Stanford and the University of California (Cal).
I mean, why not? Names are just words.
“Two weeks ago, after Colorado left the Pac-12 for the Big 12, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN that he was open to expansion,” report Nicole Auerbach and Chris Vannini.
Naturally, the idea of expansion revolves around money — which is exactly why the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 keep adding teams — but not everybody is certain that adding two West Coast teams to the ACC is going to make financial sense.
“Though there are some within the ACC that are open to exploring Stanford and Cal as potential additions, others don’t think the two schools would bring enough value to the league to make it work,” Auerbach and Vannini write. “Even if they were to come in with reduced shares, is that enough to offset the increased travel costs for all? These are questions that would need to be answered.”
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The cost of flying from coast to coast and the toll that travel time takes on athletes and coaches are the biggest cons of folding two California teams into the ACC, but The Athletic also examines the potential upsides to such a massive geographical expansion. Unsurprisingly, most of them come down to financial benefits.
A Pac-4 conference isn’t appealing for anybody, so moving to a high-profile conference like the ACC would be a smart move for Stanford and Cal. Other big conferences haven’t expressed interest in including those two schools, so the ACC might be the only Power 5 move Stanford and Cal can make. There’s also the option of moving to the ACC for football and to other conferences for other sports.
“The next steps in realignment revolve around Stanford and Cal right now. The American Athletic Conference and Mountain West would be interested,” Vannini points out. “Perhaps Stanford and Cal could put their non-football sports in the West Coast Conference to save on travel. Again, this is all very preliminary and about gathering information and options.”
ESPN is the other big beneficiary of potential ACC expansion because adding Stanford and Cal to its ACC Network offerings gives the sports media giant a bigger West Coast foothold, which it desperately longs for. There are also rumblings that ACC powerhouses Florida State and Clemson are dissatisfied with the conference because of revenue-sharing issues and may bolt soon, which could mean that the ACC needs to add more big teams.
Remember, all of these discussions are preliminary at this point, but it goes to show that conference realignment craziness is far from over. We shouldn’t expect the bumpy ride to end anytime soon.
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