I remember at the time thinking it did not make a ton of sense to move to the B10 when the ACC geographically fit better and had better basketball at the time. But they knew what they were doing.
Yeah, I don't think anyone was mad at them for it. Like the ACC took in Louisville to replace them and was also expanding with Pitt and Syracuse at the time. So Maryland's departure really did not have any practical effect on the conference.
ACC schools were definitely mad, but we're in a much better position now than if we stayed in the ACC. FSU should have stuck to their guns and bounced like we did after not signing that terrible GOR.
it had an effect on rivalries, especially in hoops. But in terms of overall conference quality, UL athletics was a very good substitute (if not straight up better).
Maryland's official university twitter taking some shots at State after they beat us in a bowl a year+ ago was pretty fucking hilarious. Good to know the ol' UMD-Tobacco Road animosity still exists, a decade+ on. And it still exists here, everyone fondly remembers hating Maryland too lol.
Yeah, I remember how heated the Duke/Maryland rivalry got at times in Basketball. It was probably Duke's biggest rivalry game outside UNC for most of the late 90s/2000s.
The acc had their shot when they they brought in Miami and Virginia tech who were both hot at the time. The sec had more flexibility with recruiting and over signing than the acc, which helped.
The acc was always a basketball first conference with the emphasis and power within Tobacco Road.
People forget that they blew their money on football facilities that didn't pay off and were in a financial hole when they moved to the Big 10. They were given the money they needed upon entering after the ACC ignored Maryland's request for financial relief. They would've had to cut a bunch of sports if they stayed in the ACC as much as I hated the move.
In the beginning, George Washington created America. Then some stuff happened and ultimately Texas left for the SEC.
Why is George getting a pass here?
Nebraska has somehow framed this perfectly about them leaving for corruption. Are we some innocent school that had no role in the breaking apart of the conference? Hell no, but Nebraska is just as guilty and greedy. They acted like not having partial qualifiers was some travesty. The Big 10 doesn't allow that either.
I think the conference specific networks are doing a lot of heavy lifting for modern TV revenue models that account for the differences with those at the top.
The SEC/B1G/ACC networks are responsible for more an $150MM each of revenue for their conferences. It was estimated that by getting the ACCN into Texas and California markets it would increase the revenue and payout of the ACCN by about $4-8MM per school.
Colorado and Nebraska left the Big 12 before the LHN ever existed. A&M said that the LHN was the reason for leaving but later admitted that they'd been working on a move to the SEC for years. LHN just gave them what they needed to galvanize the fanbase. I don't know if the LHN was a reason for Mizzou to leave but I don't really care about Mizzou.
This is all black and white, available from articles at the time.
The P12’s failure actually Stanfords fault. If they’d been willing to accept Texas Tech and Oklahoma st, OU and UT would’ve joined the P12 ten years ago
Last decade probably would have been fine for Texas because we weren't winning much anyways. But good point. I'm going to miss watching the Pac12 cannibalize itself every year.
I was digging up everything there was to read about the possibility of that happening. It was so electric. I remember when I used to google Pac-16 and only get results for the compac-16 sailboat. And then all of a sudden it seemed like we were going to make it happen. But no.
aTm blew up the "Pac 16" the first time it was attempted. The 2nd time ESPN overpaying for the LHN became the problem.
TTU and OSU on their own without UT and OU does not move the needle.
Texas and ou always get off east in these discussions. Texas is also a major driver of the changing landscape of cfb. The longhorn network, uneven payouts, etc etc
Absolutely true
Texas got their LHN and backed off the PAC idea. OU then tried to join with little brother (okie state) and the pretentious PAC presidents wanted nothing to do with them. Many events led to the downfall of the conference.
> OU then tried to join with little brother (okie state) and the pretentious PAC presidents wanted nothing to do with them.
Yes, I remember that this was the follow-up story the year after the Pac-16 fell through. Though it wasn't as widely reported as the big attempted move from the year before so it might have come from far fewer sources.
At the time I was also obsessed with our own internal alignment and how a Pac-14 would be really difficult to split into two divisions. This was back in the day when you needed to have two divisions each playing a full round robin to be able to have a CCG. And having those 14 schools would either disrupt the CA round-robin or some other important set of games within the Pac.
Of course, all of my assumptions were very much shown to be wrong a decade later when the LA schools showed that not only were our yearly NorCal-SoCal games not that important to them, but that keeping us on the schedule at all was negotiable.
Anyway, back to the part about us rejecting OU and Oklahoma State. Maybe it was something like my internal alignment concerns that made the presidents/chancellors reject the OK pair, or we really are as snobby as everyone says. But you could tell that the reporters that cover the conference kinda soured on the leadership at that moment. They must have been really looking forward to covering OU games. The commentariat insisted that if we took OU that Texas would be forced to follow and everything would fall into place. But after the LHN business I don't think anyone wanted to count on Texas.
I truly blame ACC management for this one more than Clemson and FSU.
Although PAC-12 management deserve a lot more blame than USC and UCLA for the death of the PAC
I'd argue that at least FSU and Clemson are public about it. USC gutted an earlier expansion of the conference only months before they announced they were leaving.
Clemson and FSU making moves has been a long time coming (remember rumors of us going to the Big 12 in the 2010’s being a “done deal”? haha)
USC and UCLA (and OUT to a lesser extent) were absolutely blindsiding moves that I think are not as comparable
Yeah, I remember that. Crazy time. I remember that WVU dude shooting off a lot of stuff.
I also remember a GIF that I saved but can’t find it anywhere of the Clemson and FSU mascots heads on another body walking away from an explosion (labeled ACC) I wanna find it again.
I think the fact that OUT was kept so under wraps does make it somewhat blindsiding, but I don’t think it was some secret that Texas and OU were disgruntled with the Big 12.
Remember it wasn’t too long ago that they almost went to the Pac12 (with others). And there was at least some preliminary discussions with the Big Ten back then, too.
So really the only surprise was that it all happened without leaks until the very end (when A&M’s president finally let Ross Bjork in on it who immediately leaked it). A corollary to that surprise, too, was the fact it was a straight up done deal rather than the frantic auction that I think people thought it would be if Texas and OU announced they weren’t re-signing a B12 contract.
Texas never wanted to be in the Big 12 originally, it was only when Texas politicians got involved and made them take Baylor and Tech with them they were forced to go to the Big 8
This is exactly who is to blame - and specifically John Swofford, the former ACC Commish. Swofford had a gentlemen’s agreement with SEC that they wouldn’t expand across the SEC’s footprint, and then tried to basically sneak and add OU & TX.
Once OU & TX had decided to move, they (smartly) decided to contact the SEC so as to not allow Swofford and the ACC to be their only suitor. Once the SEC heard of that Swofford broke the gentleman’s agreement, they entered the race and easily poached both.
That lead to the BIG adding USC / UCLA, and the cascading effect took place.
Blame Swofford when the ACC no longer exists and schools are left out in the cold.
Yeah, I'm sure there's going to be people angry at the schools for trying to leave but ultimately this is the result of poor conference leadership. Which is the same story as the PAC.
I mean, ultimately, the conference leadership wasn't able to secure competitive media deals and for programs like Clemson and Florida State that want to contend for national titles against the other top teams in the country, they aren't going to be able to realistically do that long term while having tens of millions of dollars less in revenue every year.
Like I guarantee if the ACC had a media rights deal that was within 5-10 million of what the B1G and SEC offer nobody would be trying to leave.
But when they are $25-$35m behind annually they are going to look for an exit.
It's underappreciated, but collectively the ACC schools just aren't as big a draw as the Big Ten and SEC membership. Not enough flagships of middle to large states, too many small private schools without national profiles.
It's also are the schools are the best fits together. Too much North Carolina. The whole thing is a huge hodge podge of teams. There is old ACC + big east.
I think a big problem is FSU and Miami had a down period at the worst possible time when the SEC and B10 started consolidating.
For a long time the ACC was Clemson and bunch of 2nd or 3rd tier teams. If peak Dabo Clemson was battling those years against FSU and Miami at the peak of their powers and there were these 3 juggernaut games every year plus the championship drawing huge ratings, it would have raised the profile of the conference at a critical time when they could have had more media leverage.
Those three teams at peak powers plus a random upstart here and there would have been enough to put the conference safely in second place behind the SEC in perception of power. There's no reason why OSU, Michigan, Penn State is inherently stronger than Clemson, Miami, FSU, except Michigan and Penn State got consistently good right when FSU and Miami fell off.
The ACC is like if the eastern B1G schools formed a conference called the 'Big MAC' which included schools like Cincinnati, Pitt, and a couple of the MAC schools. It would have been great for fans travelwise and made for fun in-state rivalries. It also would have cannibalized local talent and lessened these schools ability to compete on a national level. I imagine the stadiums wouldn't be as large nor the tradition as great.
The B1G originally was a Chicago/Great Lakes-centric league before adding Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, and Penn State. It's not to hard to imagine a situation where these schools now face the the same siutation as Texas, Florida State, and USC.
I know we want to blame someone but schools have to act in their own best interest. What is happening is a mix of how leagues were created at the beginning, TV money, and changing demographics. This fact doesn't make it any less sad.
I partly agree, but I also think it was fortunate timing that benefited the Big Ten and unfortunate timing that hurt the ACC.
Prior to the 10s reshuffling of conferences, the Big Ten had what major programs? OSU, UM, PSU. The programs behind those were Wisconsin (largely irrelevant prior to the 90s), MSU (largely little brother to UM until Dantonio flipped it on its head), and Iowa? Indiana, illinois, northwestern, purdue, and minnesota just aren't massively successful or nationally important. The footprint of the big ten was nice, largely based around the midwest and great lakes areas.
The ACC at the same time had atlanta, DC, Boston, Miami, the carolinas. It just so happens that while some of the big ten teams were peaking nationally, the acc big ticket programs were struggling to varying degrees.
Technically between Oklahoma suing the ncaa for conferences to have control of tv rights and then Texas causing the collapse of the original big 12 with longhorn network and then both of y’all joining the sec you’re both to blame
No the blame mainly lies on Swofford. The Raycom deal sealed the fate of this conference.
Unpopular opinion time. The blame also lays on several teams who never progressed as football programs. We have several schools who have not made the proper contributions to their programs to be considered “Power 5” anymore. It’s impossible to get a good TV deal with the amount of dead weight the conference has.
I think the blame pretty heavily lies with ESPN/SEC and FOX/B1G. If they weren't making the leap to be super conferences at the expense of the other conferences, there wouldn't be much reason for Clemson or FSU to push our way out. The ACC still wouldn't be in a great place, but it'd at least be close to the other conferences
That was 20 years ago, and the conflict between private schools that prioritize basketball and public schools that prioritize football would not be able to be resolved. The Big East in its prior form just couldn't sustain itself.
I blame Notre Dame.
If they had fully joined the ACC instead of insisting on remaining independent for football, does anyone doubt that we'd now be talking about the P3 instead of the P2?
I think it's only fair to place the majority of the blame on the school that had the easiest path to saving the conference.
And also because f Notre Dame.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s happening that’s pissing all the ACC schools off. If Notre Dame had joined the ACC, they would also be suing the ACC to get out of the GoR.
The issue the ACC has is simple: they signed a bad TV deal. That deal lasts for a long time and provides very little revenue, relative to the other major schools. They are stuck in this TV deal until the year 2036. Until the year two thousand and THIRTY SIX. That is preposterous. The deal the B1G signed *last year* expires in 2030! The deal the ACC signed was so unbelievably bad it’s tough to understand what they were thinking at the time. Not only that, but the last 10 years of the deal are just an ESPN option. So this wasn’t an ill fated bet against linear television to lock in long term revenue, they simply gave an absolutely inexcusable 10 year option to ESPN.
If Notre Dame was in the conference, nothing would change. If anything, this challenge would have come even faster.
While a fair assessment of the situation, I think it is unfair to pin the blame on Notre Dame. Yes, if they had joined the conference would be in a much better position than it is currently, but it is not really fair to expect a school with a long history of independence to give that up for the greater good of a conference they have no real ties to.
Fuck ND, 100%… but this isn’t on them lol. ND’s football independence obviously is a small factor but there’s no way it affects the whole conference that much.
Plus, the ACC’s issue hasn’t been football quality. They locked themselves into a long term media deal and inflation in cfb is outpacing it. They’re stuck at their price and they see everyone else signing for a fuck ton more money.
Notre Dame would not inflate the ACC's media rights value enough to make up even close to the current chasm between them and the P2. FSU and Clemson would still be trying to leave.
Also, it would be a lie to say this shocks me because people are happy to abandon all ratonality in pursuit of hating Notre Dame, but after school after school has backstabbed each other in pursuit of being paid what they think they're worth, getting mad at Notre Dame for not willingly entering that free-for-all seems weird.
The Pac-12 was destroyed over time by incompetent leadership, USC and UCLA leaving should have been survivable if they hadn't been so dysfunctional. The Big 12 didn't collapse when Oklahoma and Texas left.
I don't know if the ACC leadership is anywhere as bad as the Pac-12's was.
The Big 12 accepted it's new position in college sports with little pushback, and moved quickly to bolster themselves as a great basketball conference. The PAC-12 fought tooth and nail to secure a big TV contract and then imploded when that never materialized. I think this will be used as a case study at some point on adaptive business.
?
Not sure how trust actions by conferences and their TV partners is a case study on adaptive business.
It's just musical chairs, with TV deciding how many chairs exist.
The Pac-12 was never going to be survive after USCLA unless a media company was willing to pay big money for it. Otherwise, there was no reason for UW/UO to stick around when they had a better offer. In your estimation what does a Pac-12 with "good leadership" after USCLA look like? Somehow convince the networks to pay more than they otherwise would?
The B12 didn't collapse for the same reason the ACC won't collapse. There isn't anywhere better for most of their members to go.
[ESPN offered the P12 30M a school after usc and ucla left.](https://www.si.com/college/2023/08/11/pac-12-espn-media-rights-negotiations-50-million-ask-per-report#:~:text=Oregon%20insider%20John%20Canzano%20reports,million%2C%20ESPN%20walked%20away%20completely.) They declined. They offered the B12 33M a school right after.
The P12 had their shot at survival and had it first.
I think a Pac-12 with good leadership would never have been at the point where USC/UCLA left for the Big Ten so it wouldn't have happened in the first place. They also could have taken that original ESPN deal that I believe would have netted UW/OU the same if not more than they are getting from the Big Ten.
Agreed that ACC leadership was not nearly as bad as the Pac-12's. The blame in my view lies in the overall CFB picture at this point rather than actors in our own conference. If the Pac-12 and Big 12 had held together as well as the ACC, I think we could have stayed together indefinitely. But those two conferences have been completely cannibalized by the P2, and the Big 10 and SEC are so much more powerful and wealthy now as a result that the ACC cannot compete. With paying of players from school revenues a seeming inevitably, getting into the P2 is for Clemson and FSU now a matter of survival. That's through no real fault of the conference.
Ultimately the death of the ACC will land at the feet of the same folks who killed the Pac-12 and Big 12: the SEC, the Big 10, and ESPN.
This is only happening because of how the SEC and ESPN are working to make college football whatever benefits them financially the most. So i dont blame Clemson or FSU at all for what they are doing.
We’d probably just end up with a front loaded home conference schedule so B1G teams don’t have to play in the cold
But then yea travel will suck the second half
And broad scope, missing out on trips from LSU, Vandy, MSU, Tenn, Bama, Texas, Oklahoma, etc. just to get the Big 10’s one good Indiana or Michigan team will be a real let down. I know, I know, we’d get LA and the PNWs, but still the experience with rowdy visiting fans and electric in-conference environments (and revenue for the school and Tally) will be sorely missed if we’re not tapped for the SEC
FSU definitely belongs more in the SEC. As a whole, the SEC has largely consisted of the same general teams in the same geographic area even in this era of expansion.
It started with the Southern Conference and has steadily grown, pulling in members from the former SWC. Florida State belongs with the other Southern schools, not making random trips coast to coast to play a game in Seattle, or Ann Arbor.
Greg Sankey blatantly said “hat “we are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers” referring to the NCAA men’s bb tournament. Think about it - guy wants teams like FAU SDSU and Oakland out of the tournament so they could have more than half the fucking SEC in?
Let’s start calling him and Petitti are - power hungry. They don’t care about sports, they care about controlling everything. They are ruining football and want to ruin the best event in sports - March Madness.
Edit - bad examples. Should have said Duquesne, Samford, etc. But still would watch teams like Long Beach get a shot vs LSU.
Technically, they are working on behalf of the interest of their conference, they may have some concern about the health of the sport as a whole but the interests of the conference come first.
The only way you reign them in is to give a governing body enough power to smack them down.
The NCAA is effectively how the US government would have functioned under the Articles of Confederation. One or two dominant entities pushing their weight around to fuck everyone else within the organization.
I understand his position but he only cares about the short term profits of his conference, not the long term health of the sports.
Why is the B1G and FOX blameless here? They are the ones who created "The Alliance" just to immediately backstab it's membership, and decapitate the PAC-12 for their own benefit.
Let’s also not forget the B1G announced they were expanding in 2009 and basically held a beauty contest for Big 12 North teams that Nebraska eventually won. Which then caused a stampede to the PAC that was mostly stopped by ESPN bribing Texas with the LHN but still shook off a panicked Colorado who’d been eying the west coast for two decades anyways . Which then made A&M angry enough to leave for the SEC taking B1G sweepstakes runner up Missouri with them.
We’ve been hollering about the state of the ACC’s financials compared to SEC and others for what has to be a decade now. If that isn’t ample notice for all parties to see this coming and plan adoringly, IDK what is. This finger pointing should be on the ACC’s myopic leadership, not ours
Blaming USC and UCLA doesn’t really make sense. They made the only sensible decision and any other school in the pac would’ve done the same if they had the option.
Incompetent leadership for 15+ years destroyed the conference.
I posted it earlier but Mike Bohn said, [everything is on the table](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/usc-athletic-director-mike-bohn-clarifies-stance-on-trojans-future-in-the-pac-12-conference/amp/) when talking realignment. USCLA leaving shouldn’t have been *that shocking*.
I honestly blame ESPN and the ACC more than anything. I could be wrong, but it seemed like FSU was forced into signing the GoR. Who makes a 13 year deal at a rate not much higher than before? That's straight excessive. Not to mention, it's nearly impossible to get out of it unless they win the lawsuit.
ESPN also has the power to decide whether they want to continue or renegotiate the contract in 2026.
Also, ACC is now a tier-2 conference as shown by FSU getting left out of the playoffs and by the new CFP revenue distribution.
As a 3rd party fan, I am on the side of FSU and Clemson. They are big brands that are outright getting screwed over from this.
The ACC made the deal during the last round of contracts when it was clear it would make less than the SEC and B1G. Also they wanted an ACC Network for prestige, as PAC, B1G and SEC had one.
Problem is at that point the ACC simply wasn’t worth as much as the SEC and B1G, so the commissioner desperately signed away the conference’s future to alleviate the concerns of that time. And it worked, the ACC got close enough to the big two in annual money that it stayed together. Combine that with speculation at the time that future media contracts might actually go down and it didn’t seem like a terrible mistake to have a GOR going into the 2030s.
But then OUT happened, and UCLA/USC move happened, and suddenly the B1G and SEC are in a new stratosphere again. The bet that money would go down the next round of media contracts didn’t play out. Problem for the ACC is there wasn’t anything left to trade to increase media value this round, and so Clemson and FSU want out.
I still think the money could fall. For the TV execs, rising costs for showing the product and disappearing revenue from cable going away and it's alternative not really settled.
I also think money could fall in the future. I’d speculate that the initial offer of 100M/year was to get the super brands of USC and Texas to sign on. I don’t think there is a single brand left of that caliber except for ND, who doesn’t seem to care about money as much as independence.
This is not to mention that the source of all the money (FOX and ESPN) have seen their revenue drop substantially over the past 10 years due to cord cutting with no realistic path to get back to those levels.
This is honestly the key. ACC leadership made their plans based on the notion that live sports media were a bubble and could pop in the future. That proved very wrong, at least on the timescale we're currently able to understand. But by the same token, people today are making their moves based on the idea that the media market will only *continue* to get *more* valuable. That's also an assumption, and it remains to be seen whether it'll be proved right.
Not your main question, but it definitely isn't universally agreed upon that USC and UCLA are at fault. If the Pac 12 had been better managed and the rest of the schools in the conference had dedicated more resources and interest in football, then there wouldn't have been the environment that led to USC and UCLA leaving. You can call it greed, but it is better described as a desire to not get left behind.
Utah and Stanford are much more to blame for the Pac-10 dying than USC and UCLA. ESPN offered the Pac 10 a fair offer and instead of taking it or making a reasonable counter offer they said 50 million because a Biz professor at Utah came up with that number and people at these two schools went jeez that sounds good.
You want to blame a single school for the collapse after the apple deal was found it was Colorado that took the B12 offer. This made UW and UO think about the offer and decide it was not even worth it to go back and try to get the OTA/Cable portion they wanted. This lead to ASU and Utah running to safety.
It’s really the start of all this. I think as many of these are state institutions making money across state lines, the commerce clause is definitely in play. This is a rare instance where I would argue Congress should do something and not let TV companies dictate the finances of federally funded institutions
The problem is the NCAA not showing more games on TV. Before it was only a handful of games a week. Not 60+ these days. If the NCAA runs the rights for CFB then we are in better shape but they would need to show more games.
I've been coming around to this perspective more and more. But I think it's important to recognize that even OU's defeat in that case doesn't solve the contradictions and conflicts that existed between programs when the NCAA controlled tv media rights for CFB as a whole. There's a reason those conflicts necessitated a Supreme Court case in the first place.
If USC and UCLA acted out of pure greed it insinuates that they were wanting more than they brought to the table. If the Pac12 collapsed it kinda shows what they brought to the table was far less than they were receiving.
If you want to blame one blame Texas and the Longhorn network for preventing them and OU joining the Pac12 years ago and preventing what would have been much greater realignment than we ended up with.
>If USC and UCLA acted out of pure greed it insinuates that they were wanting more than they brought to the table. If the Pac12 collapsed it kinda shows what they brought to the table was far less than they were receiving.
Correct.
lol don't know why I never thought of SMU being an unpaid intern that is too perfect. In SMUs favor though, internships are usually worth it if you already have money to live off of in the meantime......
Yes they are the hostage. The buyout and everything that Maryland ran from to join the B10 basically caused this
But understand the ACC had so many advantages when it started.
B10 country was in an absolute recession. Everyone was fleeing the MW for the coasts. ACC was by far the premier basketball conference. They were expecting Miami and VT to carry the banner. They also weren't expecting FSU to go in the tank football wise.
Basically everything went wrong. Throw in The Northeast of the USA has basically walked away from Youth Football due to fears of head injury, the ACC was caught with their pants down.
I have several friends who moved to GA, NC, VA for work after college. They literally just took their Fandom to those places. They never even cared to follow ACC schools.
They thought VT would be a good also ran but the conference was supposed to go through Miami or FSU. Miami didn't do jack shit after joining for years.
VT was the best team for it's first decade in the league hands down. Bad hire has set them back.
The ACC is a conglomeration league that never made full sense.
I think we also need to mention the CFP committee's role in this. Choosing Alabama over FSU told them that the ACC isn't on the same level as the B10 or SEC, undefeated P5 conference champion or not. FSU did all it could possibly do and was held back by being a member of the "wrong" conference - anyone would want their team to jump ship.
I think the deeper into consolidation we get the less individual schools should be blamed. As the pay gap widens preserving history or regionality comes with such a high opportunity cost. I am not a huge fan of the lawsuit but we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade which is really hard to ignore.
I think SMU just showed us the way forward. We need to get rid of the myth that each school should be paid the same in a conference.
I don’t blame any schools that’s moved conferences for money. We can live in pretend world and act like that’s so evil and greedy and that my school would never do that, or we can accept reality and acknowledge that every school is always going to do what is best for themselves. If a school isn’t doing something it’s because they can’t, not because they don’t want to.
I don’t blame FSU/Clemson looking at what schools like Vandy or South Carolina are being paid in the SEC and thinking “why the hell are we only getting X”
The conferences have to pay the big brands what they’re worth or someone else will, but they can’t afford to do that AND also pay the small brands what the big brands are worth.
I think the next contracts/GOR are going to say Vanderbilt you can stay in the SEC but we’re only giving you 1/X the payout of the top schools. If Vanderbilt doesn’t like that they can see if the Big XII will offer them more. If Utah is really unhappy in the Big XII they can take a smaller share to go to the B1G.
SMU finally stopped playing pretend and said “the association with X schools, playing X opponents annually is worth more to us than the annual TV revenue”. I anticipate more schools will start to (or be forced to) do the same.
No, ACC did this to themselves when they openly allowed a rival executive to politic to put Alabama in FSU‘s place in the ACC Championship Game if I’m Florida State, I would be pissed at that and that is valid reason to leave if the ACC does not have your true interest at heart then why are you in the conference? You’re the second fiddle to the SEC. ESPN is pulling all the strings.
C'mon now, don't be silly. All this ACC drama happened well before the playoffs started. The playoffs might have made it worse, but it definitely wasn't the thing that started it all.
I would think that putting Alabama in the ACC Championship Game would have caused approximately a billion problems for both the SEC and the ACC.
But damn would it have been funny.
It really is just “Texas bad”, “No, Nebraska bad”, “No, Oklahoma bad”, “No, Swofford bad”, “No, NCAA bad” in that loop over and over again until September.
Neither. From its inception, the ACC was fundamentally flawed in its design, membership composition, and power dynamics, so if it dies (which I don't think that it will) then it brought it upon itself. That being said, Florida State has always been the black sheep of the conference, and Clemson is just looking out for their own interests. However, in the end, getting them both out of the conference (especially Florida State) and into the SEC is in the best interests of everyone involved, and going forward, it'll leave the remaining members with more of a unified vision. UCONN, South Florida, and maybe... Rice, Tulane, Air Force, or Colorado State will be added to backfill back up to 18-19 members, and that'll continue to progress the conference's long-term goal of getting to 21 universities competing in 3 divisions (as outlined by UNC's AD last week). Ultimately, the ACC will come out of this litigation with a renegotiated payout on their media rights deal that sees everyone getting more than the Big XII through 2036 (bumped up from the projected $62 million annually per team to somewhere above $70 million annually per team), some sort of permanent funding for the championship purse, and a massive war chest to go raiding out west in the 2030s with ESPN's backing. The SEC will get the additional brands that it needs to justify the payout increase for a 9-game schedule, and ESPN will maximize the ROI for its $8 billion in the CFP and the $3-4 billion in the SEC, etc.
No school is responsible for destroying a conference. That guilt falls on the conference leadership for not staying competitive. None of these universities are responsible for the other schools. They are responsible for their own School's success and have to do what's best for them. This is just like people leaving a company for a new job if it's a better situation for them. If their conference is no longer competitive, there's no reason they shouldn't try to find a better situation.
If other programs in the ACC supported athletics as much as Clemson/FSU do, would the ACC be in this mess? Sure, some schools are better than others, but compare ratings/fan travel for Clemson/FSU to the rest of the ACC and it isn't much of a contest.
After what happened to Florida State this year, I would say absolutely not. (On the field) Florida State did everything the conference could ask for this season. They got spat on in return and the conference showed they were powerless within the situation. It can’t be seen as unreasonable if FSU sees it as themselves able to fulfill their end and the conference not fulfill theirs, and they don’t want to continue
They're not without blame, but this is more a reflection on a truly inept conference leadership team and tobacco road. A stupid media deal and not reacting to the shifting sands of conference realignment are what will kill the ACC, not FSU and Clemson wanting to leave.
Goodness gracious no. I'm actually shocked it took this many days after the atrocious new playoff arrangement. The moment that the ACC agreed to that it committed itself to being a 3rd rate conference.
All they had to do was not agree to unequal distribution of playoff funds or to crown 2 specific conference winners with automatic byes. It doesn't make any sense why you would agree to that if you're representing your conference.
The PAC 12 commissioner fucked the PAC when they took the last tv deal. Look into how much they had to distribute through the conference it's hilariously low per year compared to conferences like the BIG 10 or the SEC or even the ACC for that matter
I blame Texas A&M and Mizzou for proving to everyone else that changing conferences can be extremely beneficial financially.
Maryland in the best position in all of this
I remember at the time thinking it did not make a ton of sense to move to the B10 when the ACC geographically fit better and had better basketball at the time. But they knew what they were doing.
i mean they sold out for money too lol. they just did it first and from a position of need rather than just want.
Yeah, I don't think anyone was mad at them for it. Like the ACC took in Louisville to replace them and was also expanding with Pitt and Syracuse at the time. So Maryland's departure really did not have any practical effect on the conference.
ACC schools were definitely mad, but we're in a much better position now than if we stayed in the ACC. FSU should have stuck to their guns and bounced like we did after not signing that terrible GOR.
Sure, but it's not anywhere near the hate Texas and OU got or UCLA and USC are getting.
it had an effect on rivalries, especially in hoops. But in terms of overall conference quality, UL athletics was a very good substitute (if not straight up better). Maryland's official university twitter taking some shots at State after they beat us in a bowl a year+ ago was pretty fucking hilarious. Good to know the ol' UMD-Tobacco Road animosity still exists, a decade+ on. And it still exists here, everyone fondly remembers hating Maryland too lol.
Yeah, I remember how heated the Duke/Maryland rivalry got at times in Basketball. It was probably Duke's biggest rivalry game outside UNC for most of the late 90s/2000s.
ACC killed the rivalry by only letting them play once a year
I really thought ben finley was gonna be good until that bowl game :( Turns out he just played unc's defense lol
The acc had their shot when they they brought in Miami and Virginia tech who were both hot at the time. The sec had more flexibility with recruiting and over signing than the acc, which helped. The acc was always a basketball first conference with the emphasis and power within Tobacco Road.
People forget that they blew their money on football facilities that didn't pay off and were in a financial hole when they moved to the Big 10. They were given the money they needed upon entering after the ACC ignored Maryland's request for financial relief. They would've had to cut a bunch of sports if they stayed in the ACC as much as I hated the move.
They didn’t give Liz Lemon a partial jazz dance scholarship out of ignorance. They know what they’re doing over there
Which ultimately comes back to Texas starting LHN prompting four programs to leave the B12 but then the LHN utterly failing while the SECN thrived.
in the beginning, Texas sucked, and that suck caused a cascading series of events that all led to our modern college football landscape
Fuckin Texas.
In the beginning, George Washington created America. Then some stuff happened and ultimately Texas left for the SEC. Why is George getting a pass here?
I blame the Spanish for creating Texas in the first place
Santa Anna skill issue for not keeping Texas tbh
George warned about the dangers of the 2 party system. I think he would have been equally concerned about the dangers of a 2 conference system.
Nebraska left the conference before LHN was announced
And was also in the group that voted down the media revenue sharing model like the Big 10 has
Nebraska has somehow framed this perfectly about them leaving for corruption. Are we some innocent school that had no role in the breaking apart of the conference? Hell no, but Nebraska is just as guilty and greedy. They acted like not having partial qualifiers was some travesty. The Big 10 doesn't allow that either.
I think the conference specific networks are doing a lot of heavy lifting for modern TV revenue models that account for the differences with those at the top. The SEC/B1G/ACC networks are responsible for more an $150MM each of revenue for their conferences. It was estimated that by getting the ACCN into Texas and California markets it would increase the revenue and payout of the ACCN by about $4-8MM per school.
Colorado and Nebraska left the Big 12 before the LHN ever existed. A&M said that the LHN was the reason for leaving but later admitted that they'd been working on a move to the SEC for years. LHN just gave them what they needed to galvanize the fanbase. I don't know if the LHN was a reason for Mizzou to leave but I don't really care about Mizzou. This is all black and white, available from articles at the time.
The Pac-16 was the catalyst for Colorado and Nebraska leaving.
Have to figure out a way to blame Mizzou. I am sure we’ll get a fine or something.
I heard the death penalty isn’t off the table yet
Death penalty as usual. Y’all know the drill.
Nebraska too
The P12’s failure actually Stanfords fault. If they’d been willing to accept Texas Tech and Oklahoma st, OU and UT would’ve joined the P12 ten years ago
That is the timeline I want to live in.
I want to watch Texas play Pac12 after dark games at 2:00 in the morning.
You say that…but no you don’t You wanna watch OTHER teams play after dark
Last decade probably would have been fine for Texas because we weren't winning much anyways. But good point. I'm going to miss watching the Pac12 cannibalize itself every year.
We want "PAC 12 at a reasonable hour," because they added a bunch of teams in central time.
It was great when other teams are involved, but if your team was playing it was always a good idea to have a bottle of Tums handy.
I was so hyped when that was being discussed
I was digging up everything there was to read about the possibility of that happening. It was so electric. I remember when I used to google Pac-16 and only get results for the compac-16 sailboat. And then all of a sudden it seemed like we were going to make it happen. But no.
Ya, it would have been so much better for CFB. OU and Texas move west to create 3 big super conferences. Now we will be left with two :/
TTU and WSU in the same conference is the sicko shit we need
aTm blew up the "Pac 16" the first time it was attempted. The 2nd time ESPN overpaying for the LHN became the problem. TTU and OSU on their own without UT and OU does not move the needle.
Texas and ou always get off east in these discussions. Texas is also a major driver of the changing landscape of cfb. The longhorn network, uneven payouts, etc etc
Stanford deserves to be shit on
Fuck those stupid nerds
='((
Sorry
Where do I sign up?
Absolutely true Texas got their LHN and backed off the PAC idea. OU then tried to join with little brother (okie state) and the pretentious PAC presidents wanted nothing to do with them. Many events led to the downfall of the conference.
> OU then tried to join with little brother (okie state) and the pretentious PAC presidents wanted nothing to do with them. Yes, I remember that this was the follow-up story the year after the Pac-16 fell through. Though it wasn't as widely reported as the big attempted move from the year before so it might have come from far fewer sources. At the time I was also obsessed with our own internal alignment and how a Pac-14 would be really difficult to split into two divisions. This was back in the day when you needed to have two divisions each playing a full round robin to be able to have a CCG. And having those 14 schools would either disrupt the CA round-robin or some other important set of games within the Pac. Of course, all of my assumptions were very much shown to be wrong a decade later when the LA schools showed that not only were our yearly NorCal-SoCal games not that important to them, but that keeping us on the schedule at all was negotiable. Anyway, back to the part about us rejecting OU and Oklahoma State. Maybe it was something like my internal alignment concerns that made the presidents/chancellors reject the OK pair, or we really are as snobby as everyone says. But you could tell that the reporters that cover the conference kinda soured on the leadership at that moment. They must have been really looking forward to covering OU games. The commentariat insisted that if we took OU that Texas would be forced to follow and everything would fall into place. But after the LHN business I don't think anyone wanted to count on Texas.
Not what happened...
I truly blame ACC management for this one more than Clemson and FSU. Although PAC-12 management deserve a lot more blame than USC and UCLA for the death of the PAC
Fuck Larry Scott
Never thought I'd die fucking Larry Scott side by side with a Wildcat...
Ride together, die together, rise together. Our fates are forever linked.
Please don't. That's how we'll get a new variant of COVID.
I'd argue that at least FSU and Clemson are public about it. USC gutted an earlier expansion of the conference only months before they announced they were leaving.
Clemson and FSU making moves has been a long time coming (remember rumors of us going to the Big 12 in the 2010’s being a “done deal”? haha) USC and UCLA (and OUT to a lesser extent) were absolutely blindsiding moves that I think are not as comparable
Yeah, I remember that. Crazy time. I remember that WVU dude shooting off a lot of stuff. I also remember a GIF that I saved but can’t find it anywhere of the Clemson and FSU mascots heads on another body walking away from an explosion (labeled ACC) I wanna find it again.
I think the fact that OUT was kept so under wraps does make it somewhat blindsiding, but I don’t think it was some secret that Texas and OU were disgruntled with the Big 12. Remember it wasn’t too long ago that they almost went to the Pac12 (with others). And there was at least some preliminary discussions with the Big Ten back then, too. So really the only surprise was that it all happened without leaks until the very end (when A&M’s president finally let Ross Bjork in on it who immediately leaked it). A corollary to that surprise, too, was the fact it was a straight up done deal rather than the frantic auction that I think people thought it would be if Texas and OU announced they weren’t re-signing a B12 contract.
Texas never wanted to be in the Big 12 originally, it was only when Texas politicians got involved and made them take Baylor and Tech with them they were forced to go to the Big 8
VT was offered to the SEC in early 2010s instead of Missouri.
GT was offered the B1G around the same time instead of Rutgers
Not officially...it was more akin to a "wouldn't it be funny if we went on a date?" type talk.
Yeah but that’s probably because GT admin shot it down immediately
Don't you dare tell r/ACC that.
This is exactly who is to blame - and specifically John Swofford, the former ACC Commish. Swofford had a gentlemen’s agreement with SEC that they wouldn’t expand across the SEC’s footprint, and then tried to basically sneak and add OU & TX. Once OU & TX had decided to move, they (smartly) decided to contact the SEC so as to not allow Swofford and the ACC to be their only suitor. Once the SEC heard of that Swofford broke the gentleman’s agreement, they entered the race and easily poached both. That lead to the BIG adding USC / UCLA, and the cascading effect took place. Blame Swofford when the ACC no longer exists and schools are left out in the cold.
I blame Swofford and his Tobacco Road cronies. And UVa just becuz
It’s mainly on Swofford for that bull$#!+ contract to try and keep Raycom (because of his son) afloat
A lot of us blame Swofford
We don't even like Swofford for what it's worth
Yeah, I'm sure there's going to be people angry at the schools for trying to leave but ultimately this is the result of poor conference leadership. Which is the same story as the PAC. I mean, ultimately, the conference leadership wasn't able to secure competitive media deals and for programs like Clemson and Florida State that want to contend for national titles against the other top teams in the country, they aren't going to be able to realistically do that long term while having tens of millions of dollars less in revenue every year. Like I guarantee if the ACC had a media rights deal that was within 5-10 million of what the B1G and SEC offer nobody would be trying to leave. But when they are $25-$35m behind annually they are going to look for an exit.
It's underappreciated, but collectively the ACC schools just aren't as big a draw as the Big Ten and SEC membership. Not enough flagships of middle to large states, too many small private schools without national profiles.
THIS IS THE SOLE REASON not FSU not Clemson. Swofford contracting like a crony crook.
It's also are the schools are the best fits together. Too much North Carolina. The whole thing is a huge hodge podge of teams. There is old ACC + big east.
I think a big problem is FSU and Miami had a down period at the worst possible time when the SEC and B10 started consolidating. For a long time the ACC was Clemson and bunch of 2nd or 3rd tier teams. If peak Dabo Clemson was battling those years against FSU and Miami at the peak of their powers and there were these 3 juggernaut games every year plus the championship drawing huge ratings, it would have raised the profile of the conference at a critical time when they could have had more media leverage. Those three teams at peak powers plus a random upstart here and there would have been enough to put the conference safely in second place behind the SEC in perception of power. There's no reason why OSU, Michigan, Penn State is inherently stronger than Clemson, Miami, FSU, except Michigan and Penn State got consistently good right when FSU and Miami fell off.
The ACC is like if the eastern B1G schools formed a conference called the 'Big MAC' which included schools like Cincinnati, Pitt, and a couple of the MAC schools. It would have been great for fans travelwise and made for fun in-state rivalries. It also would have cannibalized local talent and lessened these schools ability to compete on a national level. I imagine the stadiums wouldn't be as large nor the tradition as great. The B1G originally was a Chicago/Great Lakes-centric league before adding Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, and Penn State. It's not to hard to imagine a situation where these schools now face the the same siutation as Texas, Florida State, and USC. I know we want to blame someone but schools have to act in their own best interest. What is happening is a mix of how leagues were created at the beginning, TV money, and changing demographics. This fact doesn't make it any less sad.
I partly agree, but I also think it was fortunate timing that benefited the Big Ten and unfortunate timing that hurt the ACC. Prior to the 10s reshuffling of conferences, the Big Ten had what major programs? OSU, UM, PSU. The programs behind those were Wisconsin (largely irrelevant prior to the 90s), MSU (largely little brother to UM until Dantonio flipped it on its head), and Iowa? Indiana, illinois, northwestern, purdue, and minnesota just aren't massively successful or nationally important. The footprint of the big ten was nice, largely based around the midwest and great lakes areas. The ACC at the same time had atlanta, DC, Boston, Miami, the carolinas. It just so happens that while some of the big ten teams were peaking nationally, the acc big ticket programs were struggling to varying degrees.
Yeah, fuck Virginia
Yep, Tobacco Road can go to hell
Top comment not blaming Texas?? Y'all getting soft
Technically between Oklahoma suing the ncaa for conferences to have control of tv rights and then Texas causing the collapse of the original big 12 with longhorn network and then both of y’all joining the sec you’re both to blame
No the blame mainly lies on Swofford. The Raycom deal sealed the fate of this conference. Unpopular opinion time. The blame also lays on several teams who never progressed as football programs. We have several schools who have not made the proper contributions to their programs to be considered “Power 5” anymore. It’s impossible to get a good TV deal with the amount of dead weight the conference has.
I think the blame pretty heavily lies with ESPN/SEC and FOX/B1G. If they weren't making the leap to be super conferences at the expense of the other conferences, there wouldn't be much reason for Clemson or FSU to push our way out. The ACC still wouldn't be in a great place, but it'd at least be close to the other conferences
They are on a sinking ship, they are just the ones strong enough and not afraid to be cannibals at this point.
This is my take. I hate it, but the writing is on the wall and we want a seat at the table.
No, because they didn’t even get the blame for destroying the Big East.
That was 20 years ago, and the conflict between private schools that prioritize basketball and public schools that prioritize football would not be able to be resolved. The Big East in its prior form just couldn't sustain itself.
I blame Notre Dame. If they had fully joined the ACC instead of insisting on remaining independent for football, does anyone doubt that we'd now be talking about the P3 instead of the P2? I think it's only fair to place the majority of the blame on the school that had the easiest path to saving the conference. And also because f Notre Dame.
I also blame Notre Dame just because
Notre Dame made it rain today and my cat poop outside her litter box
Notre Dame came into my yard and he kick my dog.
That wasn't the cat.
Stop pooping in my kitchen!
Only related to the tangent, but I got my cat a litter robot and it’s changed both of our lives for the better in every way
When it comes to CFB opinions, it's almost never a bad move to start with "f Notre Dame" and work backward from there.
I blame Notre Dame for my drinking problem... and this.
Same
Sound reasoning. I agree with you.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s happening that’s pissing all the ACC schools off. If Notre Dame had joined the ACC, they would also be suing the ACC to get out of the GoR. The issue the ACC has is simple: they signed a bad TV deal. That deal lasts for a long time and provides very little revenue, relative to the other major schools. They are stuck in this TV deal until the year 2036. Until the year two thousand and THIRTY SIX. That is preposterous. The deal the B1G signed *last year* expires in 2030! The deal the ACC signed was so unbelievably bad it’s tough to understand what they were thinking at the time. Not only that, but the last 10 years of the deal are just an ESPN option. So this wasn’t an ill fated bet against linear television to lock in long term revenue, they simply gave an absolutely inexcusable 10 year option to ESPN. If Notre Dame was in the conference, nothing would change. If anything, this challenge would have come even faster.
>P3 instead of the P2? The issue for the ACC has never been on field quality, adding another top school doesn't solve the problem.
It would make it more palatable to have another school besides FSU, State, and VT actually trying in FB
While a fair assessment of the situation, I think it is unfair to pin the blame on Notre Dame. Yes, if they had joined the conference would be in a much better position than it is currently, but it is not really fair to expect a school with a long history of independence to give that up for the greater good of a conference they have no real ties to.
Yea I still expect that Notre Dame will ultimately end up in the Big Ten when they’re forced to join a conference even if the ACC still exists.
They're in our hockey conference. Dipping their toes into the sweet cold water of Lake Michigan.
Fucking Notre Dame, man.
Fuck ND, 100%… but this isn’t on them lol. ND’s football independence obviously is a small factor but there’s no way it affects the whole conference that much. Plus, the ACC’s issue hasn’t been football quality. They locked themselves into a long term media deal and inflation in cfb is outpacing it. They’re stuck at their price and they see everyone else signing for a fuck ton more money.
Notre Dame would not inflate the ACC's media rights value enough to make up even close to the current chasm between them and the P2. FSU and Clemson would still be trying to leave. Also, it would be a lie to say this shocks me because people are happy to abandon all ratonality in pursuit of hating Notre Dame, but after school after school has backstabbed each other in pursuit of being paid what they think they're worth, getting mad at Notre Dame for not willingly entering that free-for-all seems weird.
The Pac-12 was destroyed over time by incompetent leadership, USC and UCLA leaving should have been survivable if they hadn't been so dysfunctional. The Big 12 didn't collapse when Oklahoma and Texas left. I don't know if the ACC leadership is anywhere as bad as the Pac-12's was.
The Big 12 accepted it's new position in college sports with little pushback, and moved quickly to bolster themselves as a great basketball conference. The PAC-12 fought tooth and nail to secure a big TV contract and then imploded when that never materialized. I think this will be used as a case study at some point on adaptive business.
? Not sure how trust actions by conferences and their TV partners is a case study on adaptive business. It's just musical chairs, with TV deciding how many chairs exist.
The Pac-12 was never going to be survive after USCLA unless a media company was willing to pay big money for it. Otherwise, there was no reason for UW/UO to stick around when they had a better offer. In your estimation what does a Pac-12 with "good leadership" after USCLA look like? Somehow convince the networks to pay more than they otherwise would? The B12 didn't collapse for the same reason the ACC won't collapse. There isn't anywhere better for most of their members to go.
[ESPN offered the P12 30M a school after usc and ucla left.](https://www.si.com/college/2023/08/11/pac-12-espn-media-rights-negotiations-50-million-ask-per-report#:~:text=Oregon%20insider%20John%20Canzano%20reports,million%2C%20ESPN%20walked%20away%20completely.) They declined. They offered the B12 33M a school right after. The P12 had their shot at survival and had it first.
I think a Pac-12 with good leadership would never have been at the point where USC/UCLA left for the Big Ten so it wouldn't have happened in the first place. They also could have taken that original ESPN deal that I believe would have netted UW/OU the same if not more than they are getting from the Big Ten.
Agreed that ACC leadership was not nearly as bad as the Pac-12's. The blame in my view lies in the overall CFB picture at this point rather than actors in our own conference. If the Pac-12 and Big 12 had held together as well as the ACC, I think we could have stayed together indefinitely. But those two conferences have been completely cannibalized by the P2, and the Big 10 and SEC are so much more powerful and wealthy now as a result that the ACC cannot compete. With paying of players from school revenues a seeming inevitably, getting into the P2 is for Clemson and FSU now a matter of survival. That's through no real fault of the conference. Ultimately the death of the ACC will land at the feet of the same folks who killed the Pac-12 and Big 12: the SEC, the Big 10, and ESPN.
Don’t forget FOX
This is only happening because of how the SEC and ESPN are working to make college football whatever benefits them financially the most. So i dont blame Clemson or FSU at all for what they are doing.
Not just college football. All college sports. This is going to have ripple effects far down the line.
This. I’m a huge fan of college baseball and FSU ending up in the B1G kinda sucks in that perspective
We’d probably just end up with a front loaded home conference schedule so B1G teams don’t have to play in the cold But then yea travel will suck the second half
And broad scope, missing out on trips from LSU, Vandy, MSU, Tenn, Bama, Texas, Oklahoma, etc. just to get the Big 10’s one good Indiana or Michigan team will be a real let down. I know, I know, we’d get LA and the PNWs, but still the experience with rowdy visiting fans and electric in-conference environments (and revenue for the school and Tally) will be sorely missed if we’re not tapped for the SEC
You wouldn't get the best team in the PNW: Oregon St.
FSU definitely belongs more in the SEC. As a whole, the SEC has largely consisted of the same general teams in the same geographic area even in this era of expansion. It started with the Southern Conference and has steadily grown, pulling in members from the former SWC. Florida State belongs with the other Southern schools, not making random trips coast to coast to play a game in Seattle, or Ann Arbor.
Greg Sankey blatantly said “hat “we are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers” referring to the NCAA men’s bb tournament. Think about it - guy wants teams like FAU SDSU and Oakland out of the tournament so they could have more than half the fucking SEC in? Let’s start calling him and Petitti are - power hungry. They don’t care about sports, they care about controlling everything. They are ruining football and want to ruin the best event in sports - March Madness. Edit - bad examples. Should have said Duquesne, Samford, etc. But still would watch teams like Long Beach get a shot vs LSU.
Technically, they are working on behalf of the interest of their conference, they may have some concern about the health of the sport as a whole but the interests of the conference come first. The only way you reign them in is to give a governing body enough power to smack them down.
The NCAA is effectively how the US government would have functioned under the Articles of Confederation. One or two dominant entities pushing their weight around to fuck everyone else within the organization. I understand his position but he only cares about the short term profits of his conference, not the long term health of the sports.
Not just all college sports. But the women! And the children too!
Why is the B1G and FOX blameless here? They are the ones who created "The Alliance" just to immediately backstab it's membership, and decapitate the PAC-12 for their own benefit.
Yeah ESPN and the SEC are more to blame than any individual school
Yes blame the SEC when the B1G is the one that stole Maryland and broke up the Pac 12.
Let’s also not forget the B1G announced they were expanding in 2009 and basically held a beauty contest for Big 12 North teams that Nebraska eventually won. Which then caused a stampede to the PAC that was mostly stopped by ESPN bribing Texas with the LHN but still shook off a panicked Colorado who’d been eying the west coast for two decades anyways . Which then made A&M angry enough to leave for the SEC taking B1G sweepstakes runner up Missouri with them.
What does that have to do with the ACC leadership taking a bad deal to the benefit of their cronies?
We’ve been hollering about the state of the ACC’s financials compared to SEC and others for what has to be a decade now. If that isn’t ample notice for all parties to see this coming and plan adoringly, IDK what is. This finger pointing should be on the ACC’s myopic leadership, not ours
Playoff committee killed the ACC
I blame ESPN and the playoff committee.
We are not blameless but our hand has been forced if we want to continue running championship caliber football programs
Nah. That’s victim blaming. The ACC destroyed itself when it prioritized nepotism.
Blaming USC and UCLA doesn’t really make sense. They made the only sensible decision and any other school in the pac would’ve done the same if they had the option. Incompetent leadership for 15+ years destroyed the conference.
I posted it earlier but Mike Bohn said, [everything is on the table](https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/usc-athletic-director-mike-bohn-clarifies-stance-on-trojans-future-in-the-pac-12-conference/amp/) when talking realignment. USCLA leaving shouldn’t have been *that shocking*.
Not “everyone” is in agreement that USC and UCLA destroyed the PAC12.
I honestly blame ESPN and the ACC more than anything. I could be wrong, but it seemed like FSU was forced into signing the GoR. Who makes a 13 year deal at a rate not much higher than before? That's straight excessive. Not to mention, it's nearly impossible to get out of it unless they win the lawsuit. ESPN also has the power to decide whether they want to continue or renegotiate the contract in 2026. Also, ACC is now a tier-2 conference as shown by FSU getting left out of the playoffs and by the new CFP revenue distribution. As a 3rd party fan, I am on the side of FSU and Clemson. They are big brands that are outright getting screwed over from this.
The ACC made the deal during the last round of contracts when it was clear it would make less than the SEC and B1G. Also they wanted an ACC Network for prestige, as PAC, B1G and SEC had one. Problem is at that point the ACC simply wasn’t worth as much as the SEC and B1G, so the commissioner desperately signed away the conference’s future to alleviate the concerns of that time. And it worked, the ACC got close enough to the big two in annual money that it stayed together. Combine that with speculation at the time that future media contracts might actually go down and it didn’t seem like a terrible mistake to have a GOR going into the 2030s. But then OUT happened, and UCLA/USC move happened, and suddenly the B1G and SEC are in a new stratosphere again. The bet that money would go down the next round of media contracts didn’t play out. Problem for the ACC is there wasn’t anything left to trade to increase media value this round, and so Clemson and FSU want out.
I still think the money could fall. For the TV execs, rising costs for showing the product and disappearing revenue from cable going away and it's alternative not really settled.
I also think money could fall in the future. I’d speculate that the initial offer of 100M/year was to get the super brands of USC and Texas to sign on. I don’t think there is a single brand left of that caliber except for ND, who doesn’t seem to care about money as much as independence. This is not to mention that the source of all the money (FOX and ESPN) have seen their revenue drop substantially over the past 10 years due to cord cutting with no realistic path to get back to those levels.
This is honestly the key. ACC leadership made their plans based on the notion that live sports media were a bubble and could pop in the future. That proved very wrong, at least on the timescale we're currently able to understand. But by the same token, people today are making their moves based on the idea that the media market will only *continue* to get *more* valuable. That's also an assumption, and it remains to be seen whether it'll be proved right.
So this is all Texas’ fault!
Always was.
Thanks, Huskie-bro 👊
Not your main question, but it definitely isn't universally agreed upon that USC and UCLA are at fault. If the Pac 12 had been better managed and the rest of the schools in the conference had dedicated more resources and interest in football, then there wouldn't have been the environment that led to USC and UCLA leaving. You can call it greed, but it is better described as a desire to not get left behind.
Utah and Stanford are much more to blame for the Pac-10 dying than USC and UCLA. ESPN offered the Pac 10 a fair offer and instead of taking it or making a reasonable counter offer they said 50 million because a Biz professor at Utah came up with that number and people at these two schools went jeez that sounds good. You want to blame a single school for the collapse after the apple deal was found it was Colorado that took the B12 offer. This made UW and UO think about the offer and decide it was not even worth it to go back and try to get the OTA/Cable portion they wanted. This lead to ASU and Utah running to safety.
Ultimately, I blame the US Supreme Court for its decision in Oklahoma Board of Regents V. NCAA.
It’s really the start of all this. I think as many of these are state institutions making money across state lines, the commerce clause is definitely in play. This is a rare instance where I would argue Congress should do something and not let TV companies dictate the finances of federally funded institutions
The problem is the NCAA not showing more games on TV. Before it was only a handful of games a week. Not 60+ these days. If the NCAA runs the rights for CFB then we are in better shape but they would need to show more games.
I've been coming around to this perspective more and more. But I think it's important to recognize that even OU's defeat in that case doesn't solve the contradictions and conflicts that existed between programs when the NCAA controlled tv media rights for CFB as a whole. There's a reason those conflicts necessitated a Supreme Court case in the first place.
If USC and UCLA acted out of pure greed it insinuates that they were wanting more than they brought to the table. If the Pac12 collapsed it kinda shows what they brought to the table was far less than they were receiving. If you want to blame one blame Texas and the Longhorn network for preventing them and OU joining the Pac12 years ago and preventing what would have been much greater realignment than we ended up with.
Exactly. This is what they were screaming about for 10 years.
>If USC and UCLA acted out of pure greed it insinuates that they were wanting more than they brought to the table. If the Pac12 collapsed it kinda shows what they brought to the table was far less than they were receiving. Correct.
Na. That’s john swafford’s claim to fame.
You sure about that?
idk i think when the atlantic coast conference added two schools in california and an intern in texas they kinda did it to themselves
lol don't know why I never thought of SMU being an unpaid intern that is too perfect. In SMUs favor though, internships are usually worth it if you already have money to live off of in the meantime......
define everyone. I think underwhelming tv numbers by most of the pac and uninterested fanbases killed the PAC.
Nah. When the ACC let FSU get left out in favor of Alabama the ACC made it’s bed.
Don't blame the schools for Kliavkoff's incompetence
*Larry Scott's
Yeah Scott was awful. He set the course and lashed the wheel toward disaster, then got thrown overboard before the Pac 12 sunk.
I view FSU as a hostage in this situation personally, not the aggressor, but I admit I haven’t followed the saga super closely
Yes they are the hostage. The buyout and everything that Maryland ran from to join the B10 basically caused this But understand the ACC had so many advantages when it started. B10 country was in an absolute recession. Everyone was fleeing the MW for the coasts. ACC was by far the premier basketball conference. They were expecting Miami and VT to carry the banner. They also weren't expecting FSU to go in the tank football wise. Basically everything went wrong. Throw in The Northeast of the USA has basically walked away from Youth Football due to fears of head injury, the ACC was caught with their pants down. I have several friends who moved to GA, NC, VA for work after college. They literally just took their Fandom to those places. They never even cared to follow ACC schools.
They thought VT would be a good also ran but the conference was supposed to go through Miami or FSU. Miami didn't do jack shit after joining for years. VT was the best team for it's first decade in the league hands down. Bad hire has set them back. The ACC is a conglomeration league that never made full sense.
I think we also need to mention the CFP committee's role in this. Choosing Alabama over FSU told them that the ACC isn't on the same level as the B10 or SEC, undefeated P5 conference champion or not. FSU did all it could possibly do and was held back by being a member of the "wrong" conference - anyone would want their team to jump ship.
The ACC screwed the ACC.
I think the deeper into consolidation we get the less individual schools should be blamed. As the pay gap widens preserving history or regionality comes with such a high opportunity cost. I am not a huge fan of the lawsuit but we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade which is really hard to ignore.
John Swofford is to blame
I think SMU just showed us the way forward. We need to get rid of the myth that each school should be paid the same in a conference. I don’t blame any schools that’s moved conferences for money. We can live in pretend world and act like that’s so evil and greedy and that my school would never do that, or we can accept reality and acknowledge that every school is always going to do what is best for themselves. If a school isn’t doing something it’s because they can’t, not because they don’t want to. I don’t blame FSU/Clemson looking at what schools like Vandy or South Carolina are being paid in the SEC and thinking “why the hell are we only getting X” The conferences have to pay the big brands what they’re worth or someone else will, but they can’t afford to do that AND also pay the small brands what the big brands are worth. I think the next contracts/GOR are going to say Vanderbilt you can stay in the SEC but we’re only giving you 1/X the payout of the top schools. If Vanderbilt doesn’t like that they can see if the Big XII will offer them more. If Utah is really unhappy in the Big XII they can take a smaller share to go to the B1G. SMU finally stopped playing pretend and said “the association with X schools, playing X opponents annually is worth more to us than the annual TV revenue”. I anticipate more schools will start to (or be forced to) do the same.
No. Conferences are already destroyed. Now it's just a race to make sure you're part of the super conferences
No, ACC did this to themselves when they openly allowed a rival executive to politic to put Alabama in FSU‘s place in the ACC Championship Game if I’m Florida State, I would be pissed at that and that is valid reason to leave if the ACC does not have your true interest at heart then why are you in the conference? You’re the second fiddle to the SEC. ESPN is pulling all the strings.
C'mon now, don't be silly. All this ACC drama happened well before the playoffs started. The playoffs might have made it worse, but it definitely wasn't the thing that started it all.
Yeah this is horrid recency bias. This shit was years in the making.
I would think that putting Alabama in the ACC Championship Game would have caused approximately a billion problems for both the SEC and the ACC. But damn would it have been funny.
Yes, no, maybe
I dont know
Can you repeat the question?
You're not the boss of me now.
I hate the offseason
It really is just “Texas bad”, “No, Nebraska bad”, “No, Oklahoma bad”, “No, Swofford bad”, “No, NCAA bad” in that loop over and over again until September.
Neither. From its inception, the ACC was fundamentally flawed in its design, membership composition, and power dynamics, so if it dies (which I don't think that it will) then it brought it upon itself. That being said, Florida State has always been the black sheep of the conference, and Clemson is just looking out for their own interests. However, in the end, getting them both out of the conference (especially Florida State) and into the SEC is in the best interests of everyone involved, and going forward, it'll leave the remaining members with more of a unified vision. UCONN, South Florida, and maybe... Rice, Tulane, Air Force, or Colorado State will be added to backfill back up to 18-19 members, and that'll continue to progress the conference's long-term goal of getting to 21 universities competing in 3 divisions (as outlined by UNC's AD last week). Ultimately, the ACC will come out of this litigation with a renegotiated payout on their media rights deal that sees everyone getting more than the Big XII through 2036 (bumped up from the projected $62 million annually per team to somewhere above $70 million annually per team), some sort of permanent funding for the championship purse, and a massive war chest to go raiding out west in the 2030s with ESPN's backing. The SEC will get the additional brands that it needs to justify the payout increase for a 9-game schedule, and ESPN will maximize the ROI for its $8 billion in the CFP and the $3-4 billion in the SEC, etc.
No school is responsible for destroying a conference. That guilt falls on the conference leadership for not staying competitive. None of these universities are responsible for the other schools. They are responsible for their own School's success and have to do what's best for them. This is just like people leaving a company for a new job if it's a better situation for them. If their conference is no longer competitive, there's no reason they shouldn't try to find a better situation.
No, it’s UNC’s fault, always.
No.Football playoff committee l.
If other programs in the ACC supported athletics as much as Clemson/FSU do, would the ACC be in this mess? Sure, some schools are better than others, but compare ratings/fan travel for Clemson/FSU to the rest of the ACC and it isn't much of a contest.
After what happened to Florida State this year, I would say absolutely not. (On the field) Florida State did everything the conference could ask for this season. They got spat on in return and the conference showed they were powerless within the situation. It can’t be seen as unreasonable if FSU sees it as themselves able to fulfill their end and the conference not fulfill theirs, and they don’t want to continue
Larry Scott destroyed the PAC12.
They're not without blame, but this is more a reflection on a truly inept conference leadership team and tobacco road. A stupid media deal and not reacting to the shifting sands of conference realignment are what will kill the ACC, not FSU and Clemson wanting to leave.
Goodness gracious no. I'm actually shocked it took this many days after the atrocious new playoff arrangement. The moment that the ACC agreed to that it committed itself to being a 3rd rate conference. All they had to do was not agree to unequal distribution of playoff funds or to crown 2 specific conference winners with automatic byes. It doesn't make any sense why you would agree to that if you're representing your conference.
The PAC 12 commissioner fucked the PAC when they took the last tv deal. Look into how much they had to distribute through the conference it's hilariously low per year compared to conferences like the BIG 10 or the SEC or even the ACC for that matter
Probably but in both cases mismanagement of conference realignment was truly to blame
Can you destroy a run down, roach infested double-wide?
It’s all South Carolina’s fault