ACC clears way to add SMU, Stanford, Cal

DALLAS - The Atlantic Coast Conference has cleared the way for Stanford, California and SMU to join the league next year.

The additions make the ACC the latest power conference to expand its membership and footprint westward. Starting in August 2024, the league with Tobacco Road roots in North Carolina will increase its number of football schools to 17 and 18 in most other sports, with Notre Dame remaining a football independent.

Notre Dame is currently the westernmost ACC school in South Bend, Indiana, with Louisville the farthest west among football members.

But now, like the Big Ten and Big 12, the ACC will be a cross-country conference. The ACC will span from Boston in the Northeast to Miami in South Florida, out to Dallas in the heart of the Southwest and up to the Northern California, where Stanford and Cal reside.

The ACC becomes the fourth super conference with the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 all having at least 16 football-playing members — and seems to signal an end to realignment among the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful leagues.

For SMU, the ACC is a return to major conference football for the first time since the program infamously was shuttered by the NCAA as part of sanctions for paying players back in the early 1980s.

This is a big move for SMU as the school continues to return to athletic prominence, but some are questioning if the financial sacrifice is worth it.

"We established a vision to reestablish SMU athletics as a nationally recognized and relevant program," SMU President R. Gerald Turner said.

Those who love SMU have no doubt been following the realignment chatter in recent months, and now have a sense of both relief and celebration that it happened.

"We’re finally back to where we belong," SMU Board of Trustees Chair David Miller said.

Some thought upgrades to Gerald J. Ford Stadium would be the only big news for SMU this summer, but that all changed Friday.

SMU announced another upgrade, leaving the American Athletic Conference for the Atlantic Coast Conference. The ACC is one of the premiere college conferences in the country.

"I think it is going to be great for the program and school overall," SMU junior Clayton Jolley said.

"It was due, it was coming. We know it was coming," SMU student Omar Jaber said.

On the eve of the opening weekend of play for the 2023 college football season, ACC presidents approved the addition of SMU, Cal, and Stanford.

The schools will begin ACC play in all sports in 2024.

While a move to a "Power 5 Conference" is big for SMU, the millions of dollars in TV revenue won’t be seen for several years.

The university reportedly agreed to be left out of TV revenue for nearly ten years.

"SMU has money and their boosters are very wealthy and they have a lot to invest," Lone Star Live reporter Joseph Hoyt said. 

Hoyt is a former SMU beat writer for The Dallas Morning News.

"They were making $8 million per year in the American Athletic Conference, and by going to the ACC, sure they are not going to get TV revenue, but they will get revenue outside of TV deals that will be more than the $8 million with the American. The one thing that is almost priceless is to get a seat at the table."

SMU officials said the move to ACC will boost recruiting for the school both athletically and academically.

Turner said it was a selling point for both sides of the deal.

"One of the main benefits that we argued SMU brought to the ACC was Dallas and being in Texas because of the importance of recruiting here," he explained.

Turner believes Dallas stands to benefit too.

"Dallas was really important and we want Dallas to become an ACC city," he said. "There’s nobody else to compete with it. Fort Worth has TCU and the Big 12, so Dallas can be an ACC city and they want to bring events here so I think that can be important to."

Students like Jolley think the move is worth the investment. 

"I think in the long-term outlook, it’s easy to say it is," he said. "Obviously, short-term, it’s going to be tough to get that money up. But if you look at where we are at now, we aren’t getting that much TV revenue anyways."

Jaber, a freshman from Flower Mound, said hosting big programs like Duke, North Carolina, and Clemson in basketball and football will energize fans and bring in money. 

"I feel like it will bring everyone together more. [For] SMU, sometimes it’s a hard time bringing everyone together for football games, basketball games. I think this community will be more engaged and active," he said.

While the American Athletic Conference, which is headquartered in Irving, will lose SMU next year, UNT joined the AAC Conference this year, so there will still be a team from North Texas in the conference.

For the ACC, adding three schools will increase media rights revenue from its long-term deal with ESPN, and allow the conference to spread much of that new money to existing members.

New conference members typically — though not always — forgo a full share of revenue for several years upon entry.

The ACC has been generating record revenue hauls, yet is trailing the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences, and staring at an even greater gap as those leagues have new TV deals kick in.

The ACC’s deal runs through 2036.

The ACC reported nearly $617 million in total revenue for the 2021-22 season, according to tax documents. That included distributing an average of $39.4 million to full members, with Notre Dame receiving a partial share (roughly $17.4 million) as a football independent.

Yet the Big Ten reported $845.6 million in total revenue (an average of $58 million in school distributions) and the SEC reported about $802 million in revenue ($49.9 million per school) for that same time period.

The ACC outgained the Big 12 (roughly $136 million) in total revenue for third among the Power Five that season, though Big 12 schools received more money per school (roughly $43.6 million) with the league having just 10 members.

The angst over revenue led the ACC to announce plans for schools to keep more money based on their postseason success that has typically been evenly distributed to league teams.

The sticking point on expansion, which the ACC has been weighing for more than three weeks, has been how much of the new money from ESPN for three more members will go into the new performance-bonus pool and how much would be shared equally among existing members.

Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and North Carolina State had been opposed to expansion when the conference presidents chose not to vote three weeks ago on adding the three schools.

As late as Thursday night, two North Carolina trustees released a statement saying they were opposed to the ACC’s expansion plan.

Stanford and Cal will be the ninth and 10th schools to inform the Pac-12 that this will be their last sports seasons in the self-described Conference of Champions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report