ACC Keeps It Together...For Now; Impact on Stanford and Cal; "Super League": Good Luck

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and its two highest-profile schools, Clemson and Florida State, announced the settlement of several messy lawsuits last week.

The two schools had sued the ACC in pursuit of a cheaper exit route and/or a bigger share of conference revenues. The league had counter-sued, basically, in hopes of staying alive.

On the surface, everyone got what they wanted.

The two schools got a new conference revenue distribution model based on TV ratings and a big reduction in exit fees that will drop down to a manageable $75 million by 2030-31. And the league got some short-term stability.

In reality, the league has just kicked the can down the road for five years, knowing full well that all hell is going to break loose in 2030.

That's when all the major TV rights deals start to come up for renewal. The Big Ten, Big 12 and College Football Playoff media deals all expire between 2030 and 2032; the SEC follows two years later.

Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde and other media types have labeled this agreement the ACC's "doomsday clock," and I tend to agree with them.

Clemson and Florida State--not to mention colleagues Miami and North Carolina--will be looking for new homes when that next big surge of realignment takes place.

Only this time, they'll face an exit fee of "only" $75M. Hell, they may make that much over the next five years due to the increased rev shares based on TV ratings.

Now the interesting thing to watch is whether the iconic brands in the Big Ten and SEC follow the ACC blueprint. 

Will Michigan and Ohio State continue to accept the same revenue shares as Purdue and Rutgers? Will Georgia and Alabama be okay with the same slice of the pie as Mississippi State and Vanderbilt?

Doubtful.

The "super league" scenario that has been discussed on these pages and elsewhere is looking more and more likely to come to fruition. And now we have a timeline that makes sense.

Bay Area Impact: What does this settlement mean for Stanford and Cal?

Short team, it's not good news for the two Bay Area schools, who are finishing up their first year of non-stop cross country travel as members of the ACC.

You'll recall that Stanford and Cal, desperate to find a new home after the breakup of the Pac-12, had to accept drastically reduced media rights fees to get into the ACC. They will receive only 30% of their media rights for the first seven years of conference membership.

Well, the new agreement will reduce that number further, since larger shares will go to the teams whose TV ratings are the highest. Given the fact that the Bay Area schools are not ratings drivers, and their games are often relegated to the ACC network or ACC Extra, rather than ESPN or ABC, it's fair to assume they won't be getting any extra benjamins for TV numbers.

If Andrew Luck, Troy Taylor and Elijah Brown turn things around at Stanford and Cal starts making field goals and winning close games, that could change, but the current financial picture isn't a rosy one.

Long term, it may be a different story.

Super Scenarios: If the ACC implodes in 2030, and/or a super football league is created, there is a fair chance that a West Coast league will be re-formed either as a division of the super league (if it's a 64-team format) or as one of several second-tier conferences (if a super league is limited to 40-48 teams).

Football is likely to be separated from the other sports before 2030, in my opinion, due to unsustainable travel costs and the after-shocks of the House Settlement, so it's quite possible that non-football sports will already have been reorganized geographically or academically.

But there is now at least a decent possibility that when the next big wave of realignment hits, around 2030, Stanford and Cal could end up as part of a new Pac-whatever football league. 

As the man likes to say, stay tuned. The next five years are going to be a wild ride.

Good Luck: Stanford football GM Andrew Luck recently participated in a forum on the future of college athletics at Toledo, and one of his comments struck home with me: "Somehow, someway 'student-athlete' shouldn't die as a thing. I think it's incredible. I think college sports might be one of the greatest developers of humans that our country has, especially when we think about leadership or service...And somehow, some way, the money side of the equation has to be held in a proper tension with scholarships, students, and athletes."

Amen.