Well folks, it finally happened.
This was quite the news to wake up to this morning. The “Atlantic” Coast Conference is not so Atlantic anymore.
Whether you want to admit or not, this was a move the ACC had no choice to make. The Big Ten already held coast-to-coast TV money with its recent additions, as did the SEC. Now, the ACC has markets in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as well as part of California.
This would certainly mitigate the travel concerns. It would be very reminiscent of the NBA bubble a few years ago, but this is a potential solution if you’re worried about going from coast-to-coast. Which, if you were a student athlete, it would be hard to not be.
From an academics perspective, you’d be hard-pressed to argue against the ACC now being the best among the Power 4. It was already a stacked group with the likes of Duke, Wake Forest, Notre Dame for sports other than football, Boston College, and of course Syracuse. Adding Stanford and Cal to the mix makes it even more so. If you want to prevent movement out of the conference from a school like North Carolina, this is a pitch you make. Speaking of which…
With these additions, you can’t help but worry about teams departing.
North Carolina, Florida State, and Clemson are three of the most well-rounded athletic programs in the ACC, for both revenue and non-revenue sports. Losing any and all of them would be a major blow. Stanford, Cal, and SMU are all solid athletic programs, but none of them come close to the power of those three.
After this season, the collegiate athletics landscape will never be the same again. Up until Friday morning, the ACC was the only Power Five conference to not be directly affected by this wave of conference realignment. That is no more. Stanford, Cal, and SMU have completely changed the game.
