ACC adds Stanford, Cal, SMU beginning 2024-25
-
Pete Thamel, ESPN
The Atlantic Coast Conference is expanding from its Eastern roots.
The ACC presidents and chancellors met Friday morning and voted to add three schools — Stanford, Cal and SMU, the conference announced. It will bring the league to 18 members — 17 will play football full time in the league. The additions are in all sports and will begin in the 2024-25 school year.
The moves have been the subject of much drama the past month, as commissioner Jim Phillips worked diligently to appease a group of members eager to add the schools and others seeking more revenue. The protracted process ultimately ended with the ACC growing amid a backdrop that brought to light some of the fundamental tensions within the league.
“We are thrilled to welcome three world-class institutions to the ACC, and we look forward to having them compete as part of our amazing league,” Phillips said in a statement. “Throughout the evaluation process, the ACC Board of Directors, led by [University of Virginia] President [James] Ryan, was deliberate in prioritizing the best possible athletic and academic experience for our student-athletes and in ensuring that the three universities would strengthen the league in all possible ways. Cal, SMU and Stanford will be terrific members of the ACC and we are proud to welcome their student-athletes, coaches, staff and entire campus community, alumni and fans.”
The move unfolded in an atypical process, as votes in league matters usually are cast as unanimous and are simply a formality when the presidents meet to decide. The ACC needed 12 of 15 votes. Heading into the meeting Friday morning, it was uncertain whether the league had votes, a significant variance from how conference expansion typically works.
In a straw poll more than three weeks ago, four ACC schools dissented — Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and NC State. One of them needed to flip for the vote to pass, and all eyes were on NC State chancellor Randy Woodson going into the meeting.
It was a 12-3 vote Friday with NC State flipping, multiple sources confirmed to ESPN’s Andrea Adelson.
The focus on Woodson intensified Thursday night when members of the University of North Carolina’s board of trustees issued a statement to voice their objection to the additions. That move was perceived around the ACC as a political statement to be sure that UNC chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz didn’t flip his vote.
UNC and NC State did not need to be tied together, but some of the uncertainty around Woodson’s vote came from the political ramifications of not being aligned with North Carolina.
The ACC joins the ranks of a rapidly changing collegiate landscape. Starting next year, the Big Ten will have 18 teams and the Big 12 and SEC will have 16. The move leaves the Pac-12 with just two remaining programs, Washington State and Oregon State, a continued spiral that has included the league losing eight teams since late July.
Cal, Stanford and SMU will come at a significant discount, which will help create a revenue pool to be shared among ACC members. SMU is expected to come in for nine years with no broadcast media revenue, sources told ESPN, and Cal and Stanford will each start out receiving just a 30% share of ACC payouts.
That money being withheld is expected to create an annual pot of revenue between $50 million and $60 million. Some of the revenue will be divided proportionally among the 14 full-time members and Notre Dame, and another portion will be put in a pool designated for success initiatives that rewards programs that win.
For Stanford and Cal, it will be 30% of a whole ACC share for the next seven years. That number will jump to 70% in Year 8, 75% in Year 9 and then full financial shares in the 10th year, per sources.
The move delivers a life preserver to the athletic departments at Stanford and Cal, which were left twisting amid the Pac-12’s implosion. Stanford has an athletic department that is considered the gold standard in college athletics. Both will face increased travel costs, which will significantly impact a Cal athletic department that faces hundreds of millions in debt.
For SMU, the decision to forgo television revenue gave it a seat in a major conference, and the school will lean on its wealthy boosters to help it stay afloat until revenue comes in. It marks a significant moment for the school’s climb back from the death penalty for major infractions that led to the school not playing football in 1987 and 1988. SMU didn’t return to a bowl until 2009 after the penalties.
Even with the vote going through, the nearly monthlong saga to decide on the addition illuminated the divisions in the ACC. Florida State and Clemson have spoken publicly about how the revenue gap between the ACC and the Big Ten and SEC needs to close.
Although those schools had not been supportive of the additions heading into the final meeting, the decision does give them access to millions more in annual revenue if they succeed on the field. With the ACC television contract running through 2036, the past few weeks have highlighted the uncertainty that will linger into the upcoming years.
Florida State officials have been particularly vocal about leaving the league, with president Richard McCullough saying the Seminoles would “very seriously” consider leaving if the revenue-distribution model didn’t change significantly. This move by the ACC does not appear to change that tenor.
For other schools in the ACC, the three new schools represent both the addition of quality academic institutions and safety in numbers. Cal and Stanford were the last major-conference schools that offered significant value left on the board.
-
Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
NEW YORK — New York Rangers captain Jacob Trouba said their failure to close out the Carolina Hurricanes at home in Game 5 presents an important character test for his team.
“I don’t think we thought this was going to be a cakewalk,” Trouba said after the Rangers’ 4-1 loss on Monday night, which narrowed New York’s series lead to 3-2. “We’ve lost two games [in a row]. We’re facing a little adversity. We’ll see what we’re made of going down to Carolina for Game 6.”
The Rangers entered the third period with a 1-0 lead thanks to Trouba’s short-handed goal in the second frame. But the desperate Hurricanes took over the game by scoring three goals in 6:23.
Jordan Staal evened the score with his first goal of the playoffs. Just 3:06 later, Evgeny Kuznetsov netted his fourth of the postseason to give Carolina the lead. Jordan Martinook added a critical third goal before Martin Necas sealed the win with an empty-netter.
“It kind of snowballed quick on us. This was a bad period,” Trouba said. “It’s different than a regular season, where you feel bad all night and tomorrow you wake up and you’re upset. You got to turn the page quick.”
His teammate, Vincent Trocheck, didn’t see the third period the same way.
“I don’t know if I’m going to say something snowballed tonight,” he said. “They scored a couple goals in the third. It’s a seven-game series against a team that was three points behind us in the regular season. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy.”
Coach Peter Laviolette also didn’t believe the third period was the reason New York dropped Game 5.
“It was more than the third period. We weren’t sharp. We gave up way too many chances in the first period and then it died off after that,” he said.
The Rangers’ power play, which scored 10 goals in five games during a recent stretch against Washington and Carolina, went scoreless for a third straight game, the unit’s longest dry spell since March.
Meanwhile, Carolina scored three goals at even strength against New York goaltender Igor Shesterkin, marking the first time Shesterkin allowed three goals in the third period of a playoff game.
Hurricanes captain Staal said the team is starting to feel like itself again.
“Yeah, obviously wins help. But we really believe we had some good games [to start the series], but we had some mistakes, especially with the special teams, and that’s gotten a lot better,” he said. “I think our 5-on-5 game has been really good and it’s coming together more and more.
“Wins are nice. We’ve got to just keep fighting.”
Staal has played in 146 playoff games during his NHL career and has seen how hard it is to finish an opponent.
“Game 5s are tough, especially when you’re at home. You don’t want to go back on the road and you want to close it out,” he said. “But we gave it all we got, we found a way to get a win and we’re going to have to do it all over again.”
Trouba took an optimistic approach to the Game 5 loss: Since the Rangers won the first three games of the series, there was some margin for error.
“Obviously we want to close out series, but we put ourselves in a position that we get a couple cracks at it,” he said. “We played good games in Carolina. We know we can play in that building, and we’ll go down there and bring a better game.”
Game 6 is Thursday night in Raleigh.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Environment12 months agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports1 month agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports7 months agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment1 year agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Environment1 year agoTesla advances Powerwall pilot project with German electric company