It makes sense on paper, sure.
On Wednesday, the ACC announced an “endorsement of success initiatives,” which is college administrator-ese for “some schools are getting a bigger slice of the conference’s pie moving forward, and we’re going to find other places to dig up some cash, too.”
The announcement was short on details and long on jargon but did specify that additional rewards for performance in “revenue generating postseason competition” will be coming.
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In short, if schools qualify for the College Football Playoff or advance deep in the NCAA Tournament or other big postseason events, they’ll get more money. The specifics will be sorted through later.
But history, especially in college sports, has a way of repeating. And the conundrum in which the ACC finds itself is anything but new. If any league members think they can rewrite this ending, they’re mistaken.
The gap in revenue between the ACC and the sport’s soon-to-be Big 2 — the Big Ten and the SEC — is growing. Both leagues distributed more than $800 million to league members in the 2022 fiscal year. The ACC distributed $617 million to its members.
Earlier this year, Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich and Clemson athletic director Graham Neff broached the possibility of an unequal revenue sharing plan to help make up the difference. Left (somewhat) unspoken: It might also aid the long-term viability of the league and quell any desires for the league’s bluest bloods to find richer waters elsewhere.
“Is it time revenue distribution within conferences, or at least the ACC, is done differently?” Neff told the Post and Courier in February. “Yeah, I’ve been very active in those conversations within the league and continue to expect to take a leadership role in our desire for that to be a changed circumstance. Urgently.”
North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham also joined the chorus in March, adding that equal revenue sharing made sense in an eight-team league but the balance should change as conferences expand in membership and footprint.
Florida State athletic director Michael Alford made waves earlier this spring when he reiterated the possibility amid rumors the league could be vulnerable to having its most valuable members poached.
“We’re working with the conference right now,” he said. “We’re talking to them about how to create a revenue distribution model that takes in factors of who you are, how you produce, how you play, what your brand is. We’re working with other athletic directors on that. The president and I have sat in on some meetings on it. We’re working with the conference. Don’t know if we’re going to get there.”
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The league’s leadership gathered last week in Amelia Island, Fla. The only real news that emerged? Half the conference had been pressing on the league’s grant of rights only to confirm what has been suspected from the start: It’s almost certainly ironclad, barring dissolution of the conference.
So for now, the ACC is sticking together to watch the SEC and Big Ten’s bank accounts grow as members fear that will mean the gap in competitiveness between those two leagues and the rest of the sport follows suit.
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College sports’ insistence — in most cases, anyway — on sharing revenue equally has never made sense when exposed to scrutiny. The theory has been a rising tide ought to lift all boats, but Florida State and Clemson are and will always be a bigger television draw than, say, Boston College or Wake Forest. Yet the checks the conference cuts to them each offseason are equal.
This is how the Big Ten and SEC do business as well, with Vanderbilt and Ole Miss earning the same as Alabama or Georgia or LSU.
And no matter what happens moving forward, the ACC’s membership — especially those with an understanding they aren’t among the league’s most desirable television properties — should fight to keep their league that way. If the ACC is bound to splinter eventually, kowtowing to the conference’s power programs on this issue will do nothing to stop it.
Other than securing the league’s long-term future, there’s no reason for the conference’s less valuable members to hand over money to the members that TV networks find more desirable.
The problem is it won’t work.
Almost two decades ago, the Big 12 shared just 57 percent of its revenue equally. The rest would be divided among the members with greater shares given to programs depending on the reach of the network that broadcast their games. It was a contentious issue, and the league’s biggest programs — Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas A&M and Texas — steadfastly opposed a change. That issue grew contentious enough — as well as league leadership’s refusal to launch a conference-wide network — that it played a factor in then-commissioner Kevin Weiberg’s decision to resign in 2007 to help create the Big Ten Network.
In 2010, Nebraska left the league for the Big Ten, which shares conference revenue equally. Two years later, Texas A&M followed suit and split for the SEC, which also operates that way.
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In 2011, as part of the league’s new television deal that saved the conference from near-extinction, the Big 12 moved to share 76 percent of revenue equally but allowed schools to monetize their third-tier rights on their own. For Texas, that meant a $15 million payday from ESPN after it formed the Longhorn Network. Oklahoma could also make an additional $5-10 million from a side deal with Fox Sports, while most of the league’s other members were fortunate to break seven digits from modest streaming deals, most of them in-house subscription services.
Oklahoma and Texas would make more than Iowa State or Baylor on the merit of their television draw.
Guess what happened eventually?
The Sooners and Longhorns left anyway. After news broke that OU and Texas were bound for the SEC, the league explored the possibility of giving both schools an extra half-share at the expense of other schools. It never gained serious traction because the league’s two biggest brands were already out the door.
And the Iowa States and Baylors of the league were millions of dollars short, to what end?
It never mattered how revenue was shared. A better conference isn’t just about money.
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The ACC is boxed in. It has what appears to be an airtight grant of rights agreement for the next 13 years. If Clemson, Florida State or any other league members want to leave and find a home in what are fast becoming the sport’s two most powerful conferences, coming close to matching the money they could make in those leagues wouldn’t outweigh all the other benefits they’d seek by joining.
The Big Ten will be on broadcast television: FOX, CBS and NBC, in three separate windows every fall Saturday. No other league can say that. The SEC can point to its trophy case and annual parade of draft picks (even if that’s a somewhat specious concept) and reap the recruiting benefits across the south as hundreds of recruits make decisions on their future based solely on wanting to compete in the SEC.
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Most importantly, both can replace anxiety about what lies ahead in the decades to come with excitement.
The ACC can offer history and rivalries, but college sports has proven over and over again none of that matters. If SEC or Big Ten membership is an option for any team in the league, it will jump at the first opportunity. It’s about money, but it’s about so much more, too.
The eventual demise of the ACC as we know it is far from a foregone conclusion — there’s no guarantee the Big Ten or SEC determines that the schools in the league add value — but the conference finds itself in its most tenuous position of college sports’ modern era.
The league members who can’t reasonably hope for future membership in either league ought to at least hold onto what money they can get if the day comes when the ACC is left without its most valuable programs.
And although college sports still pretends to be a non-profit enterprise to any congresspersons who ask, kicking a few extra million dollars up the food chain will be a shortsighted act of charity that won’t be reciprocated. The tax breaks aren’t worth it.
If Clemson, Florida State and Miami want to be in the ACC, they’ll be in the ACC. Unequal revenue sharing isn’t going to convince them the SEC or Big Ten isn’t worth the jump.
Ceding to their demands isn’t a long-term solution. It’s just a path to hastening the ever-widening split between the haves and have-nots.
(Photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
