Stanford joins Atlantic Coast Convention


It’s official: Stanford College is about to hitch the Atlantic Coast Convention, in accordance with a Friday morning announcement.

Stanford has competed within the Pac-12 since 1918 however will enter the ACC as newcomers alongside Cal and SMU within the 2024-25 faculty yr.

The East Coast-based convention beforehand rejected the notion of growth: three days of conferences in early August culminated with the member faculties voting in opposition to extending invites to Stanford and Cal. 

Monetary agreements behind the scenes led to a unique consequence this time round. SMU will obtain no ACC media rights income for its first 9 years of membership whereas Stanford and Cal obtain a “considerably” diminished income share in early years. In keeping with reporting from The Athletic, Stanford will seemingly begin at a 30% income share for the primary seven years, earlier than incremental will increase to 100% in yr 10. 

The transfer is considered one of many by Energy 5 conferences over the previous 18 months, virtually all a direct results of multi-billion greenback media rights offers between conferences and media companions. From 2016 to 2022, the ACC, SEC, Massive 10 and Massive 12 efficiently negotiated new media rights offers that stretch by way of not less than 2030, leaving the Pac-12 as the one main convention with out a new deal.

The convention’s present deal expires in 2024 and present negotiations for a brand new deal have failed to achieve traction particularly with respected media companions. Amid looming uncertainty, USC and UCLA introduced a bombshell transfer from the Pac-12 to the Massive 10 Convention in June 2022. Since then, the Pac-12 has been decimated by members leaping ship. 

Colorado introduced its return to the Massive 12 in late July, the convention it belonged to previous to becoming a member of the Pac-12 in 2011. Not lengthy after in early August, Oregon and Washington — each founding faculties when the Pac-8 was created in 1915 — left behind their storied histories for the Massive Ten. Arizona, Arizona State and Utah introduced their strikes to the Massive 12 the next week. 

Stanford remained within the highlight as they looked for a brand new dwelling, with solely 4 faculties remaining within the Pac-12. There was hypothesis Stanford would reply with a transfer to the Massive 10, Mountain West Convention, and even go impartial, however these rumors had been hushed with Friday’s announcement.

The ACC is now the second Energy 5 convention with members on each the West Coast and East Coast, becoming a member of the Massive 10 and giving faculty athletics a really completely different make-up than just some years in the past. Convention realignment has given rise to debate round journey required for student-athletes, a related dialogue for Stanford college students almost 3,000 miles away from the other coast. 

Jerry Yang, Richard Saller, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Bernard Muir and Condoleezza Rice addressed issues about journey within the College’s Friday announcement.

“We anticipate that 22 of Stanford’s 36 sports activities will see both no scheduling impacts or minimal scheduling impacts,” they wrote. For the opposite 14 sports activities, they wrote that the College will work “with the ACC to optimize scheduling to reduce the impacts of journey.”

In keeping with the announcement, the College intends to have interaction with college and the ACC to assist college students’ tutorial success.

The transition is not going to go into impact till 2024, leaving the Pac-12 yet another yr with Stanford and different departing members. With the departure of Stanford, Cal and SMU, the 108-year-old convention will then solely embody Oregon State and Washington State.