By Heath Brown

On September 1, 2023, the NCAA’s Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) announced the addition of three new teams—Stanford, The University of Cal Berkeley, and Southern Methodist University—to the conference starting in summer 2024. The ACC, founded in 1953, consists of 15 universities that compete in 28 sports across men’s and women’s athletics. The conference additions will create a drastic change for the ACC, considering the location of its existing teams. All of the conference’s current universities are along the East Coast, while SMU is in Texas, and Cal and Stanford are in California.

Image credit: Atlantic Coast Conference via Wikimedia Commons.

Some evidence suggests that the newly admitted teams are acting as buffer teams to maintain at least 15 teams in the conference if Clemson, Miami, or Florida State, who have expressed recent desires to leave the ACC, were to do so. Additionally, Stanford and Cal are two incredibly respected and prestigious institutions for athletics and academics. A CBS Sports article reported, “Both schools are members of the prestigious American Association of Universities. The designation marks the best research institutions in the country.” Six other current ACC schools are members of the AAU, which is a testament to the cultural identity of academic excellence that the ACC wants to uphold. 

Financial reasons, however, appear to have been the more significant factor in convincing the conference to make their revolutionary move. At its core, the ACC is a corporation forced to compete against similar conference powerhouses, such as the SEC and Big Ten, in an industry that has undergone significant changes over the past few years. In 2021, the addition of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) allowed college athletes to receive financial compensation through marketing and promotions. In 2023, Miles Prusek (‘24) wrote for The Match about the immense impact that NIL has had on college sports. 

Football game at Clemson University. Photo credit: Jason A G via Wikimedia Commons.

In 2023, the ACC generated a record 617 million dollars in revenue, primarily from a television contract with ESPN. This figure is more than twice what the conference earned only ten years ago. However, despite the massive revenue increase, the ACC was only the third-largest conference earner in 2023, behind the SEC’s $802 million and the Big Ten’s $845.6 million. Before the ACC’s expansion, the SEC announced that Oklahoma and Texas would join their conference in 2024, and, similarly, UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington committed to joining the Big Ten. As explained by Peyton Dunn (‘24) in a Match article covering conference realignment in 2023, the ACC was not a pioneer of conference expansion but rather responded to the expansion of other NCAA conferences by adding new teams of their own.

The ACC is projected to receive an additional 72 million dollars a year with the addition of new teams. “We’ve gone from regional-based conferences to national, coast-to-coast conferences,” said ACC commissioner James Phillips. “Either you get busy or you get left behind.” The ACC’s expansion was primarily influenced by its potential to make more money for the conference and to alleviate the sentiment that it is falling behind the SEC and Big Ten. This poses the question of whether or not the expansion is good for the athletes of the conference. Or if it’s just what the conference members thought they needed to do in order to make more revenue and remain relevant in college sports.

Map of the United States where states with universities in the ACC are shaded in. Photo credit: User Nolephin via Wikimedia Commons.

One significant result of the expansion is that the ACC can no longer accurately be described as the Atlantic Coast Conference, because fewer of its members are bordering the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, travel times will increase for teams, because they are forced to travel across the country instead of remaining along the East Coast. Traditionally, ACC college’s method of travel for away games has been by charter bus, because most of the colleges in the conference are relatively close to each other, and it is a less expensive option than flying. To travel from Chicago to New York by charter bus is approximately $175 per person, whereas it is about $300 per person to fly the same distance. For a matchup between Virginia and Cal, however, taking a bus is no longer a viable option. 

Traveling is an especially pressing issue for the universities new to the conference, because their campuses are far away from virtually every team they compete against. Stanford, Cal, and SMU will be forced to spend more money on travel for their sports teams. This is problematic, considering that several college sports don’t make any profit. According to The New York Times’ Billy Witz, “Stanford sought to eliminate 11 sports as a cost-saving measure” during the COVID-19 restrictions era. Could a similar situation arise if universities become tired of paying expensive travel fees for sports that, even when not during a pandemic, are not making them money?