Thanks so much for all of the questions. We divided the mailbag into two parts — today we will tackle all of the realignment (or realignment-related) questions and will come back on Friday with actual football questions (plus one basketball question).
Why do you think many (maybe a majority) of ACC football fans fail to understand that FSU eventually making $30 million less per year than its in-state rival (Florida) warrants grave concern? — Sri K.
Sri, I think realignment is a tough subject for people to digest. Selling out on rivalry and tradition for more TV money isn’t what college sports was supposed to be about. As far as the consequences of staying put, none of us have lived in a world yet where we’ve seen what making $30 million more off TV actually means for a Power 5-type rivalry like Florida and Florida State. The key here is how an SEC team like Florida is going to spend that extra $30 million every year. Is it going to use it to steal FSU’s best assistant coaches and coordinators away? Are NIL rules going to change in the years to come and are SEC and Big Ten schools going to turn around and funnel all of that TV money toward recruits and transfers? Or, are schools going to simply use it to upgrade stadiums and on-campus facilities?
Tuesday is Aug. 15, the deadline for any ACC school that wants to leave the league and compete elsewhere for the 2024 season.
The most likely outcome is that Tuesday's deadline arrives and passes, and the Seminoles stay put, sources tell @TheAthletic: https://t.co/LBKYN9Maff
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) August 14, 2023
From a win-loss perspective, it’s obvious money doesn’t matter nearly as much as some people might think. How else do we explain a program like Appalachian State going on the road last year and winning at Texas A&M, and fighting to the finish with Miami and North Carolina over the last couple of seasons? Much smaller budget. Yet, right there with Power 5 programs.
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There are so many layers to the topic of conference realignment that it’s really hard to answer these questions succinctly. Ultimately, a school like Florida State that’s won national championships and views itself as a perennial contender does not want to be at such a sizable disadvantage compared to other schools that also want to play for titles. Raising that kind of money through boosters to match the deficit isn’t easy to do every year, and so FSU’s administration is right to point it out and try to find a solution. But I also think ACC schools need to sit back and ask themselves the following question: Is being in the third- or fourth-best league in college football better than being Cal, Stanford, Oregon State or Washington State right now? I think we know the answer. — Manny Navarro
How do bottom-end Big Ten / SEC schools do so poorly despite all of their riches? Are there any lessons ACC schools can apply around reducing waste since their money margins are so much slimmer? — John S.
Piggybacking off the point I made in answering Sri’s question, I think one thing we have to realize here is being a school with a very lucrative TV contract doesn’t guarantee you’ll be great in football. Not even good. The reality is this: There are only so many elite football players to go around and the majority end up signing with the same five or six schools every year. We can sit here and lie to ourselves, but parity doesn’t exist in college football, and expanding the playoff to 12 teams is only going to perpetuate the false narrative that there somehow is. Think about this: We’ve had a four-team Playoff for nine years and only seven programs have played in the national championship game. Three of those seven made one appearance (LSU, Oregon and TCU). Do we really believe that Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Clemson won’t still be winning the majority of the championships in the future when they’ve got the best recruiting classes year in and year out?
My point here is there are a lot of programs that spend a lot of money on football and still don’t win or get any closer to a championship. Texas and Texas A&M come to mind. Then there are those who are content with simply being a bowl team, and perhaps using their profits to pursue championships in other sports. The only lesson to be learned here is if current ACC teams really want to go after championships, they’ll find a way to do it by either leaving the league for a better TV deal elsewhere or raising a lot of money on their own to build a ridiculous NIL program and then pair it with an overachieving coach who won’t be lured away to the Big Ten or SEC. — Navarro
GO DEEPER
Realignment reset: Where does everyone stand, and what's next?
If the over/under on the ACC retaining all of its current members is 2.5 years, what’s your bet? — Chris V.
That’s an interesting way to think of the realignment question, Chris — but I’m taking the over, and somewhat comfortably so.
Because while, yes, the past three summers have shown us that anything can happen in realignment, let’s be pragmatic about the ACC’s situation. When the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma, the ACC … did nothing, bound by its grant of rights through 2036. Same lack of action when the Big Ten added USC and UCLA, and again this summer when the Pac-12 splintered apart. Sure, the ACC considered — and still is considering — adding Cal and Stanford, but if that made the most sense financially for the conference, wouldn’t those additions have already been made? Simply, while the rest of the college athletics landscape is shifting wildly around it, the ACC is kind of stuck.
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Take that one step further and apply that same logic to Florida State’s (loud) proclamation about wanting out. Have any other schools that actually changed conferences made half as much noise before doing so? No, because they’re focused on working through the logistics of those moves. The Seminoles, on the other hand, can whine about their financial plight as much as they want — a plight that, as Manny described, doesn’t even necessarily relate to team success — but that won’t change their reality. FSU, like every other ACC school, is locked into the grant of rights for another 13 years, and the cost to potentially break free of that contract is as expensive as ever: an estimated $120 million exit fee, as well as an estimated $30 million per year of rights remaining on the deal. And that’s without mentioning any costs incurred with a lengthy legal battle. Bottom line: If the Seminoles were actually going to do something, it would’ve cost them about $500 million this summer to do so. Not happening! As FSU trustee Bob Sasser said during the school’s now-infamous board meeting, “We’ve been talking about this for a year, and we haven’t made any progress.” He ain’t wrong.
TLDR: The financial and legal burdens to leave the ACC aren’t changing anytime soon. Until they do, it’s difficult to imagine any current members leaving. If they were navigable hurdles, someone would’ve taken the plunge by now. — Brendan Marks
Considering Notre Dame’s relationship with the ACC entails no football membership but membership in so-called “non-revenue” sports, does its push for Cal and Stanford indicate a desire to join the league for football? If not, what is Notre Dame’s endgame? — Eleanor M.
Notre Dame’s push for Cal and Stanford gives the Fighting Irish everything they want: the opportunity to compete at the highest level in non-football sports (sign me up for Notre Dame-Stanford in women’s basketball right this second, please) while still maintaining independence in football. The ACC has been very bullish in its attempts to get Notre Dame to join the league in football, but Notre Dame has all the leverage and no incentive to give up what is arguably the sweetest set-up in the country. Adding Cal and Stanford increases the competition level for Notre Dame and allows the Fighting Irish to schedule the Cardinal as one of their annual games (anywhere from four to six) against ACC opponents. It also gives the university another chance to associate itself with Stanford — where athletic director Jack Swarbrick graduated from law school after completing his undergraduate degree at Notre Dame. All the while, the Fighting Irish still don’t have to budge on giving up the NBC deal or their independence. Sounds like a win to me. — Grace Raynor
How will the ACC being so far behind the SEC and Big Ten in revenue distribution affect recruiting over the next several years? — Rick W.
The biggest way the gap impacts the ACC in recruiting comes down to top players and the perception of how many of them that the schools in the ACC can reasonably land. Thanks to television money, the SEC and Big Ten are perceived as a Power 2 of sorts, a notion teams in those leagues are undoubtedly pounding into the heads of recruits. Florida State has been just fine so far and is on pace to sign a top-five class. Clemson is still recruiting at its usual level, too. But the more the gap widens, the harder it will be for ACC schools to convince prospects that everything is OK. Heck, Florida State has already (very vocally!) said it’s not. So much of recruiting is about perception, and right now there’s no denying the Big Ten and SEC are in a league of their own. — Raynor
Once the Big Ten broke “The Alliance,” the writing was on the wall the Pac-12 and ACC were in jeopardy. Were there ever any discussions about an ACC-Pac 12 merger? It always felt painfully obvious to me that was the only solution to save both conferences. Now, it seems Jim Phillips waited too long and has no good options. — Jason B.
I spoke to a high-ranking official from an ACC school this past week who told me there were discussions about a merger between the leagues, but the Pac-12 wasn’t interested in doing it because it thought it would eventually get the TV money it believed it deserved (even after USC and UCLA announced they were leaving). Once it became apparent that wasn’t going to happen, it was every school for itself and off to the Big Ten (Washington, Oregon) and Big 12 (Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah) they went.
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Last year, when USC and UCLA first announced they were leaving, the same ACC source told me the league was interested in getting Stanford and Cal to join because it thought the schools were a good fit for the conference and would open up a new TV market with late-night programming on ACC Network. I was told Friday night the majority of the schools in the league are still pushing to make that happen but need either FSU, Clemson, North Carolina or NC State to flip their “nay” vote, providing the necessary 12 votes to make it happen.
As for why Phillips and the ACC reacted slowly, all I can tell you is Notre Dame was the only program everyone in the league could agree was a worthwhile partner to add, even though they knew getting the Irish to join in football was probably never going to happen. — Navarro
(Photo of Lawrence Toafili: Eric Espada / Getty Images)