New Scattershooting goes behind closed doors in ACC expansion, plus tons of golden nuggets

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Scattershooting around the ACC, while wondering whose bright idea was it to give Notre Dame full voting privileges without the Irish committing to a full membership in the league …

Notre Dame was pushing other ACC schools to add Cal and Stanford to expansion efforts, a strong recommendation that didn’t have the legs to force a vote among conference presidents. As I stated on the “Jerry & Jerry Show” this week, if the ACC ultimately comes apart at the seams as the Pac-12 did, blame Notre Dame.

If the Irish would swallow their football independence pride and join the ACC, the conference would have all the stability of the SEC and Big 10, plus would narrow some of the financial gap in terms of TV revenue.

While the Irish pushed the ACC toward expansion, Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina and, surprisingly, NC State were a “hard no,” which blocked the proposal (the ACC requires a three-fourths vote by the presidents, meaning 12 of the 15 schools).

According to ESPN’s Andrea Adelson, the ACC schools in favor of adding Stanford and Cal (maybe SMU), were Notre Dame, Wake Forest, Louisville, Miami and Georgia Tech. We’re assuming Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Pitt, BC and Syracuse were swing votes.

While there wasn’t enough support to even muster a vote, expansion isn’t a completely dead issue, however the clock is ticking for both Cal, Stanford and their former Pac-12 mates Washington State and Oregon State. The Pac-12 hired former West Virginia AD Oliver Luck to solve the conference’s dilemma, and Luck isn’t about to take his role lightly.

There are already hypothetical proposals about the “Pac-4” merging with the American Athletic Conference to form a 20-team superconference that would stretch coast-to-coast, which included gobbling up SMU, a school that is so desperate to join a Power 5 conference that it was willing not to take any ACC money for five to seven years in exchange for membership.

Such a merger could garner the new league $280 million annually in TV revenue or $14 million per school, the lowest of any Power 5 league, but double the money that present AAC teams are getting. One of the hangups is the same the ACC had with going coastal, massive travel expenses.

Meanwhile, there’s lots of lobbying going on behind the scenes. Cal and Stanford are calling in every favor owed in a last-ditch attempt to be absorbed into the Big 10, which previously robbed the Pac-12 of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington.

On Wednesday, it was learned that former President George W. Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been in communication with ACC officials, both lobbying for the league to reconsider SMU and Stanford, respectively. Bush’s wife, Laura, attended SMU and the Bush Presidential Library is located on the SMU campus in Dallas. Rice is a professor at Stanford and director of the Hoover Institute there, a public policy think tank and research institute.

While all that is going on, the deadline for schools to inform the ACC about exiting the conference for the 2024-25 athletic season passed without any notification, meaning that the league will allegedly stay put for a while unless Florida State discovers the loophole in the Grant of Rights package that it has so desperately sought.

Even though FSU didn’t give notice for 24-25, doesn’t mean it won’t leave after that, although such a move would cause a legal mess that could cost the Seminoles untold money.

Certainly, it appears that Florida State has become the new “bad guys” of the league after creating a toxic relationship with the other 14 schools. FSU’s national reputation may have taken a hit as well. According to sources, the SEC and Big 10 frowned upon the “barking” coming out of Tallahassee over the past few months, so if the Seminoles did find an “out” from the ACC, they have nowhere to go except the Big 12, which wouldn’t make Florida State any more revenue than it presently gets from being an ACC member.

Covering all the bases …

• Former Virginia baseball star Zack Gelof remains on a tear after being called up by the Oakland A’s. Gelof just became the first player in Athletics history to collect 20 extra-base hits and score 20 runs in his first 28 career games.
• The top UVA basketball recruiting target, Wisconsin star high school guard Kon Knueppel, announced he will make an official visit to Marquette on Aug. 28. He has previously announced plans to visit Duke, Virginia and Alabama in September.
• Another Virginia hoops target, 2025 Top 25 star Nate Ament, announced he will visit Duke on Sept. 16. He’s a Northern Virginia player, the No. 1 ranked player in the state for the Class of ‘25, according to On3’s ratings. He also plans a visit to Iowa in September.
• Yet another UVA target, power forward Matthew Hodge, who is a EYBL PSA Cardinals teammate of Cavaliers recently signed point guard Christian Bliss, narrowed his list of schools to 10: Virginia, Pitt, Old Dominion (where his father played), Penn State, Villanova, Xavier, Maryland, Alabama, Seton Hall and Marquette.
• Virginia baseball has picked up another new commitment for the recruiting class of 2025 in Will Mahala. He is the state of New Jersey’s third-ranked outfielder out of Seton Hall Prep. Also this past week, Jett Bristow announced his commitment to Brian O’Connor’s program. Bristow plays at Collegiate School in Richmond and is also a member of the ‘25 recruiting class, and is also a power-hitting outfielder.
• Bubba Sawyer, who committed to play baseball at UVA, then decommitted, has since committed to UNCG.
• Louisville’s big-time freshman basketball recruit, Trentyn Flowers, said this week that he no longer plans to enroll at the school and instead will play professional basketball in Australia. Huh?
• Kyle Teel had a three-hit night for the Greenville Red Sox affiliate earlier in the week. Those three hits gave him a 9-for-14 start in his first three games for Greenville.
• Georgia Tech has officially changed the name of its ancient football stadium to Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field, although no one will stop calling it Bobby Dodd Stadium except TV and radio announcers.
• London Perrantes has signed a pro contract in Europe, I think with a team in Greece. Would give you more, but the press release was not translated and I can’t read the language.
• Our pal Al Groh was recently invited to Penn State by coach James Franklin to talk about defense. While he was there, Groh posed for a photo with former Wahoo legends Anthony Poindexter and Marques Hagans, along with Franklin.
• Is UVA basketball a blue blood? Here’s further evidence uncovered by our pal Danny Neckel. Only four programs in the nation have been ranked in the final AP poll in at least nine of the past 10 seasons. Can you name them? They all wear blue, by the way. Answers at the bottom of this column.
• If you haven’t read Scott Ratcliffe’s profiles on Virginia’s transfer players (they’re all archived on this site), you’re missing out. So far, he has produced outstanding pieces on Dante Harris, Jordan Minor and Jake Groves. Coming up next, Andrew Rohde. In addition, I have a piece up (and a podcast) with Christian Bliss.
• Also, we want to thank all the thousands of UVA fans who have tuned in to the new “Jerry & Jerry Show,” part of the “I Love C’Ville” network, the past two weeks. We didn’t expect such a huge response, including viewers from 14 states and every corner of Virginia. It’s a live show that welcomes audience participation. Keep all those great questions coming to us. You can watch it live on this website, on the “I Love C’Ville” website, on my Twitter account, on our Facebook accounts and other platforms. It’s on every Tuesday morning from 10:15 a.m. to 11:15, and you can also watch the replay at any time.
• Also, a special shoutout to “Raising Canes” restaurant for serving us a great lunch that they delivered to the studio in downtown Charlottesville after Tuesday’s show. We will have a special guest on next Tuesday’s show to talk some UVA football. We’ll let the cat out of the bag as soon as we get all the details.
• Answer to the blue blood question. Here are the four schools: Virginia, Duke, Kansas and Villanova.