ACC expansion talks collapse; not enough support among presidents to add Cal, Stanford or SMU

By Jerry Ratcliffe

ACC expansion talks with Stanford, Cal and SMU apparently collapsed Wednesday afternoon when the league failed to gather enough support to move forward.

Even though reports surfaced that Notre Dame was pushing hard for the acceptance of Stanford and Cal, two of the four schools remaining in the conference formerly known as the Pac-12, the ACC couldn’t convince enough of the league presidents to back the proposal. Supposedly there were at least four hard nos, which prevented the conference from even taking a vote.

In order to add teams through expansion, the league bylaws require a three-fourths approval from the presidents (12 of 15, including Notre Dame). There also wasn’t enough support to vote on the addition of SMU, even though the Dallas-based school told the ACC it would join without requiring any revenue from the conference for the first 5-to-7 years. SMU donors had pledged to support the difference if the Mustangs were added to a Power 5 conference.

Those opposed to adding Cal and Stanford argued that the two West Coast teams could not add enough value via TV revenue to make it worth the ACC’s while to add them to the league, in addition to travel expenses for teams journeying cross country for games.

Reportedly, ESPN would be required to pay the ACC between $33 and $35 million for each new member and it would be the ACC’s decision on how that money would be distributed, even though SMU wouldn’t take a piece of the pie for several years down the road. Supposedly, both Cal and Stanford would have accepted a less-than-full share, about 70 percent, of what current ACC members would receive in added TV revenue.