The ACC wrapped up a tense few days of spring meetings Wednesday, and commissioner Jim Phillips said all of his league’s members are committed to each other “emphatically.”
Phillips’ comments came in the wake of multiple reports, including from The Athletic, that seven ACC members had examined the league’s grant of rights to determine whether it could be challenged in court, which could then pave the way for one or more to leave the ACC before its media rights deal expires in 2036.
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Virginia Tech athletic director Whit Babcock told the Richmond Times-Dispatch the seven schools were Virginia Tech, Virginia, Florida State, Clemson, Miami, North Carolina and NC State, and they have met together and with lawyers to examine the document.
“I would classify it as a number of conversations, usually in small groups, on interpretations of grant of rights, of bylaws of the league, of options that may be out there,” Babcock told the Times-Dispatch. “But as you know, the grant of rights has been looked at a lot of times by a lot of people.”
Babcock said the conversations weren’t as organized as many interpreted from reports Monday and that several discussions included subsets of the seven, not all seven together.
“I think it was less than ideal that it came out, but it’s been a catalyst for some real conversation and maybe getting to things a little faster that we’ve been working on as the ACC,” Babcock said.
He and his peers came out of their meetings with grievances aired, positions clarified and efforts explored to move to a new revenue model that would reward teams for competitive success. Administrators at FSU and Clemson have been the most vocal in recent months about their support for unequal revenue distribution. With a 12-team College Football Playoff coming in 2024, it is possible teams that go the furthest in the postseason would be able to keep more of the league’s allotment of CFP revenue than their peers who don’t.
After an eventful week in Amelia Island, Fla., nothing has changed for the ACC at an existential level; the league’s revenue gap compared with the Big Ten and the SEC will only snowball as those two leagues pay out $30 million more per school year over year. But if no viable exit ramp for ACC members exists until 2036, there might just be underlying tension and grumbling for quite some time.
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The buzz around the seven ACC schools in the spotlight this week has posed an interesting question for the other major conferences: Might those schools be looking for new landing spots? And if so, could they be available before 2036? Could that possibility have an impact on those conferences’ expansion decisions in the near term?
Meanwhile, in the Pac-12
Everyone out west remains in a holding pattern as administrators await the presentation of the league’s new media rights deal(s). Multiple league sources have told The Athletic that such deals are expected to be announced this summer, and Washington State president Kirk Schulz said the same earlier this month in a conversation with a Wazzu regent.
Schulz attributed the delay in negotiations to “the uncertainty in the economy, the layoffs in the tech sector and other places. … Clearly, the optics are something those folks are really worried about. … If you said when would be the worst time in the last six years to try and negotiate a media deal, probably the last five months is pretty close to the worst.”
“I know our fans are frustrated,” Schulz told Cougfan.com Friday. “I ask everybody to be patient because we have more bidders coming to the table, more people interested as the time goes on, and the 10 schools are as unified as I’ve ever seen them.”
The negotiation process is different (and slower) with media companies that have little to no experience with college football rights. ESPN remains involved in the bidding process, too. If there is any package of games on ION or The CW, a source briefed on the negotiations said, it would be very small and for the lowest-tier offerings.
The league still plans to finish its media rights negotiations before adding any members. It is highly unlikely the Pac-12 would add more than two schools to backfill after USC and UCLA depart for the Big Ten in 2024, Pac-12 sources said. It is also possible the league opts to stay at 10 members (assuming it fends off overtures from the Big 12) or adds just one new member and operates as an 11-team league, much like the Big Ten did after it added Penn State.
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One important date — not exactly a deadline per se, but a key marker — is June 30, 2023. If San Diego State were to try to leave the Mountain West after that date to join the Pac-12 for the summer of 2024, its exit fee (of about $17 million) would triple. So either the Pac-12 will make its long-awaited decision on the Aztecs by June 30, or the earliest San Diego State could compete in the Pac-12 would be fall 2025.
Although it’s hard to speak in absolutes with the Pac-12’s media deal still in flux, there is optimism among key administrators the deal will be sufficient for the league’s survival and relatively short-term, keeping all current members together with a contract and subsequent grant of rights that stretches anywhere from four to six years. Such an arrangement would stabilize the league for a few years, allowing members to brace for additional poaching efforts ahead of the Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC’s next contract negotiations.
Why UConn is on the Big 12’s radar
It’s certainly no secret at this point that the Big 12 is interested in swiping Colorado and Arizona from the Pac-12. But with that league’s media rights negotiations dragging on into the summer and the leaders at those schools continuing to stand by for a final offer, the wait will test the patience of Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark.
Yormark continues to explore his options for expanding the Big 12 into a 14- or 16-member conference going forward. Nothing seems imminent in terms of extending invitations to new members, but the first-year commissioner is doing his homework and UConn is one of several schools on his radar, Big 12 sources told The Athletic.
Westward expansion has been an open ambition ever since Yormark was hired in July, giving the Big 12 more a national presence and TV inventory in all four time zones. But Yormark has also made it well-known that he’s willing to double down on the Big 12’s advantage as the strongest college basketball conference in the country if he sees targets that add value.
UConn men’s basketball’s title run this spring certainly sparked more interest for Yormark, and the school is viewed as a potential good fit for several strategic reasons. Championship-caliber men’s and women’s basketball programs are certainly high on that list of pros, but so is the opportunity to establish more of a presence in the New York City market.
How would UConn football fit? The Huskies are coming off one of their best seasons in quite some time. Jim Mora pulled off a dramatic turnaround in his debut season, winning six games and getting the program to a bowl game for the first time since 2015. The Huskies haven’t finished with a winning record since they were Big East co-champs in 2010 and played Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. They’ve had six head coaches since then and have lost nine or more games in seven of their last nine seasons. But if they were given the resources and platform that the Big 12 offers, could they become a more legitimate program by the end of the decade?
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Yormark views these expansion prospects more from a professional sports lens, seeing things in terms of future upside more than past achievements. He’s looking at programs he can invest in by helping build up their brands so they eventually make the Big 12 more valuable when it’s time for the next TV deal in 2031.
Sources within UConn’s current league (the Big East) and past home (the AAC) both expressed skepticism about the Huskies’ interest in leaving for the Big 12. One of UConn’s biggest frustrations as a member of the AAC was the disjointed and spread-out nature of the conference, as well as the loss of traditional basketball rivals in the Northeast. When the Huskies returned to the Big East in June 2019, they celebrated the announcement at Madison Square Garden with banners, signs and paraphernalia that made it clear they felt they were back where they belonged.
“They just worked so hard to get out of a league that required them to go play UCF just to go back to a league where they’ll have to go play UCF?” one Big East source said. “I don’t see it.”
UConn athletic director David Benedict told CT Insider on Wednesday that any future realignment decisions would be a “complicated question” for the school.
“The dialogue and the commentary out there, I totally appreciate and understand people’s opinions,” Benedict said. “Where they’re emotionally tied is probably evident when you see what people say and what their opinions are. But, obviously, we look at it with a different lens, internally, and there are a lot of factors you have to consider.
“At this point in time, I’m not aware of a decision in front of me that I have to make. So what’s going to happen two days from now, two weeks from now, a month from now, six months from now, is anyone’s guess. There’s a lot of posturing that’s going on around the country. There are a lot of conversations. But, ultimately, until you have to make a decision, you don’t know and that’s not where we currently are.”
One challenge for Yormark, if he determines UConn is part of his plan, would be building consensus among his board of Big 12 presidents and chancellors. There’s some skepticism among league sources about whether UConn would become accretive in value for the conference. Yormark has enjoyed strong support from his board to pursue what he thinks is best since he was hired last July. It’s easy for presidents and ADs to get on board with importing Pac-12 schools and the value they would drive as full-share members. But going in this direction would likely take much more discussion and convincing.
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Another important conversation on that front: Can Yormark get his TV partners, ESPN and Fox, to back these moves and pay pro rata for additions that don’t come from Power 5 leagues? Or would schools like UConn be willing to take a reduced cut just to get invited? That’s where these potential moves get more complicated. The Big 12 doesn’t necessarily need to expand this summer. But even if his Pac-12 targets get a good enough deal to stay put, Yormark could go in quite a few directions to grow his league.
There’s a belief among administrators both in and out of the Big 12 that Yormark’s envelope-pushing plans go far broader than simply poaching a couple of Pac-12 schools or leaning into basketball pedigree. He’s trying to position the Big 12 to be the third-strongest power conference moving forward — or perhaps the third and final power conference standing, if instability within the Pac-12 and ACC leads to exits that break open those leagues. Yes, the most valuable schools would flock to the SEC and the Big Ten, were they to garner invites. But what about that second tier? Schools like Louisville, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech or Duke could be fits for the Big 12 if the dominoes fall this way. It might be worth waiting to see what happens elsewhere before making expansion decisions.
(Top photo: Logan Whitton / Getty Images)