ACC Spring Meetings – Syndication Server

Neff discusses an ACC revenue gap that’s only growing wider

The ACC has long lagged behind some of its Power Five counterparts when it comes to revenue distribution for its member schools. And that gap is quickly growing wider, making it a key talking point during the ACC’s annual spring meetings last week. …

“The concern that it’s growing wider, absolutely it’s a big discussion within the league,” Clemson athletic director Graham Neff told The Clemson Insider.

Thanks in large part to the launch of the ACC Network, the conference reportedly generated $497 million in gross revenue for the 2019-20 financial year, a record for the league that saw average payouts of more than $30 million to each of its full-time members (Notre Dame, a member in all sports but football, gets a different cut). Yet it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what the SEC and Big Ten are raking in.

The Big Ten reportedly generated nearly $800 million in revenue in the same year, or roughly $40 million more than the SEC as the top money maker among the Power Five conferences, which also include the Big 12 and Pac-12. The SEC took over that distinction during the 2020-21 financial year with a reported revenue of more than $833 million, or approximately $55 million per each of its 14 members.

Conferences have multiple revenue streams, including bowl payouts and the NCAA Tournament. But none is more substantial than media rights contracts as television networks and streaming services bid for broadcasting privileges. Problem for the ACC is, neither is currently competing to air its games.

That’s because the ACC is locked into a Grant of Rights agreement with ESPN until 2036, a deal that was set to expire much sooner (2027) before being extended nine years when the conference launched the ACC Network in August 2019. And short of Notre Dame joining as a full-time football member, the league’s options for renegotiating are few and far between.

The ACC initially entered the agreement in 2013 in an effort to stabilize itself after Maryland, one of the league’s founding members, left for the Big Ten. If Clemson or any of the ACC’s other current members successfully tried to leave the conference, then they would have to give up their cut of the league’s revenue distribution.

Meanwhile, the money in the SEC and Big Ten is getting bigger. The SEC recently inked a 10-year deal with ESPN reportedly worth $300 million to make the network the exclusive rights holder for the league’s football and basketball games beginning in 2024. The Big Ten is negotiating a new mega TV rights contract that will begin in 2023 and could be worth more than $1 billion, or roughly $71 million per member institution, according to Sports Business Journal.

At Clemson, Neff said the athletic department has been able to somewhat bridge the ACC’s revenue gap “through IPTAY (the department’s fundraising arm) and through people” making donations that help the school fund scholarships and facilities. Neff said it may force league members to further prioritize the allocation of their cut to the sport that’s primarily responsible for creating revenue in hopes that it brings in more money that can be used to financially supplement other areas.

“We talk about brand and how do we invest and how do we prioritize investments and what that looks like on our campuses,” said Neff, who worked as Clemson’s deputy athletic director before being promoted following Dan Radakovich’s departure in December. “I think it goes along strategically with (ACC) Commissioner (Jim) Phillips’ vision of football and elevating football’s brand. That’s where certainly a lot of is driven and certainly a lot of eyeballs within the league and within certainly the football coaches’ room.

“I’m sure in AD meetings, they look to Clemson for that type of example where investment fuels, in theory, success with the right decisions and people, which helps raise boats for a lot of the other departmental investments.”

But with the ACC well behind in the revenue arms race, it continues to leave the conference and its members in a precarious position.

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What did Swinney say about the ACC considering elimination of divisions?

At the ACC spring meetings this week, there has been “lots of football scheduling discussion” that could result in the elimination of the Atlantic and Coastal divisions. As for what a new scheduling model would look like without divisions, one of …

At the ACC spring meetings this week, there has been “lots of football scheduling discussion” that could result in the elimination of the Atlantic and Coastal divisions.

As for what a new scheduling model would look like without divisions, one of the potential new models is reportedly where each team would have three permanent conference opponents and two sets of five teams that rotate on and off every other year.

Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney joined Packer and Durham at the ACC spring meetings Wednesday and was asked if he likes the 3-5-5 scheduling model being considered.

“It doesn’t really matter, honestly,” Swinney said. “I’m not passionate one way or the other. If we change to one division, I can get on board with the 3-5-5, not that it matters. But of the changes that I’ve heard, to me, that makes the most sense. I, personally, like the divisions. That’s my personal preference for various reasons. But I’m not really passionate about it one way or the other. I want to do what’s best for the league. If a lot more people smarter than me that run this league, if they think that’s what best for this league, then hey, I’m all for it. So, I can go either way.”

Swinney added “it’s the same issues in all these other conferences” as far as determining the best route to go with scheduling.

“Some conferences are getting even bigger and it’s becoming more of a problem,” he said. “So, everybody’s dealing with the same conversations. What’s the best way to address it? And I think you can address it with the divisions as well, with a little bit of maybe a change in some of the cross-rival stuff. And you’ve still got some issues there in how to protect it, and we’ve had some conversations there.

“But again, at the end of the day, what’s best for the league moving forward? I think all of us would like our kids to have a quicker cycle through in being able to play everyone. It’s good for the fans, etcetera. But still a lot of conversation, I think, to go on that.”

Under the current scheduling format, Clemson plays fellow Atlantic Division members North Carolina State, Wake Forest, Florida State, Syracuse, Louisville and Boston College every year. Georgia Tech is the Tigers’ permanent cross-division opponent while the eighth conference game rotates among the other Coastal Division teams annually.

Brownell: ACC needs to be ‘open’ to hoops scheduling tweaks

Brad Brownell doesn’t agree with the outside perception of the ACC this past hoops season. Sitting outside The Ritz-Carlton on Florida’s Amelia Island, the site of this week’s ACC spring meetings, Clemson’s veteran men’s basketball coach thought …

Brad Brownell doesn’t agree with the outside perception of the ACC this past hoops season.

Sitting outside The Ritz-Carlton on Florida’s Amelia Island, the site of this week’s ACC spring meetings, Clemson’s veteran men’s basketball coach thought back on a year in which the conference produced just five NCAA Tournament teams (and one of those, Virginia Tech, had to win the conference tournament just to qualify). It’s the lowest number of NCAA bids the league has produced since just four teams made it in 2013.

Yet the ACC made up nearly 40% of the Elite Eight. One of the three teams, Duke, was a No. 2 seed in Mike Krzyzewski’s final season on the Blue Devils’ bench, but Miami (10) got there as a double-digit seed. And North Carolina advanced to the championship game as an 8 seed, the lowest to ever play for it all.

Brownell pointed to all of that as evidence to support his argument that the league wasn’t down as bad as some thought.

“That’s what’s frustrating is clearly some of our teams were missed and seeded too low based on what they did,” Brownell said. “Our league was probably better overall than what it was perceived.”

That narrative was largely created, Brownell believes, because of how the season started, which, for the ACC, was much slower than the finish. Clemson, which missed out on the postseason all together after playing in two of the last three NCAA Tournaments, had its share of non-conference blemishes, falling to West Virginia, St. Bonaventure and Rutgers – all teams outside the top 75 of the NET rankings – before the calendar flipped to December. Miami’s non-conference loss to Central Florida contributed to the Hurricanes being squarely on the bubble heading into Selection Sunday before sneaking in.

Brownell also used Virginia as an example of a team that struggled to click early in the season. The Cavaliers, replacing multiple starters off its NCAA Tournament team a year ago, finished the regular season 18-12, including a 12-8 mark in ACC play, but losses to Navy and James Madison within the first month were smudges on Virginia’s postseason resume that played a part in relegating the Cavaliers to the National Invitation Tournament.

“Our team was better in February than we were in November and December,” said Brownell, whose team won five of its last six games to finish 17-16 overall. “Miami was way better. Notre Dame was better. And obviously North Carolina was drastically better. So there’s frustration a little bit in that this isn’t right. The narrative of the league and a lot of your teams is already determined by early in the league schedule, and so there’s no way to really fix it or change it.”

But Brownell has some ideas. With roster turnover as frequent as it’s ever been in the sport in the transfer portal era, he wondered aloud if it’s time for the league to “think outside the box” with the type of scheduling on the front end that won’t harm the league’s profile as much while teams use the early part of the season to work out the kinks.

One thought Brownell has is playing more conference games in November and December. That way, he said, at least one team benefits from the outcome. Last season, the most conference games any ACC team played before January was two, or just 10% of the 20-game league slate.

“That really penalizes our league when you lose those kinds of games, right?” Brownell said, referring to Virginia’s non-conference losses. “As opposed to, hey, if you lose against a conference team, it may penalize Virginia, but it’s going to help someone else while you’re figuring it out. So then we may need to have a couple of our non-conference games in late December or early January. Do you do things like that?”

Another idea Brownell has is giving up guarantee non-conference games against teams with dangerously low NET rankings in order to get more neutral-site matchups with potential Quad 1 and Quad 2 opponents, which would give teams more chances at resume-building wins. Brownell acknowledged that may be more difficult to pull off since schools aren’t going to want to give up home games that bring in revenue, but he said he’d like to see the conference get more aggressive in assisting.

The only non-conference games on Clemson’s schedule for next season so far are whatever matchups the Tigers end up getting in the Emerald Coast Classic. Cal, Iowa and TCU round out the field for the tournament, which will be played Thanksgiving weekend in Niceville, Florida. Iowa and TCU were tournament teams this year.

“I’ve fought a little bit with the conference office at times in that I don’t know that they do enough to help some of the middle-of-the-pack ACC teams with some scheduling situations to give us a few more really good non-conference games,” Brownell said. “If there’s a way that they could help us set up some neutral-court games against somebody that we know is another Quad 1 or Quad 2 … it’s figuring out ways to do more of those types of things to give yourself more opportunities. We’ve got to be open to some of those things.”

Whether any of this could become more than ideas in the future is unclear. Brownell said they were tossed around among coaches during this week’s meetings, but he didn’t get a sense that anyone favors a particular idea over another since the conversations were what Brownell described as surface-level in nature.

“There’s a lot of moving parts in all of this,” Brownell said. “Sometimes it’s just if the league can just do a couple of things for a couple of schools at a time, we might have to do that when we can.”

Swinney likens Clemson’s QB situation to another from recent past

D.J. Uiagalelei remains Clemson’s starting quarterback heading into the summer, but is Dabo Swinney planning on getting prized freshman Cade Klubnik some work early next season just in case? That was a question posed to the Tigers’ coach this week …

D.J. Uiagalelei remains Clemson’s starting quarterback heading into the summer, but is Dabo Swinney planning on getting prized freshman Cade Klubnik some work early next season just in case?

That was a question posed to the Tigers’ coach this week during the ACC spring meetings. Swinney drew a parallel with his answer between the team’s current quarterback situation and the one two years ago during Uiagalelei’s freshman season when he backed up Trevor Lawrence.

“We know he’s going to have an opportunity to play just like we did with D.J. and Trevor,” Swinney said of Klubnik. “It’s no different. We knew with Trevor that we were going to try to get D.J. an opportunity to play. It’s no different with D.J. We know what we have in Cade, and we certainly want to get him opportunities to play. Just like we knew what we had in D.J. when Trevor was there.”

Lawrence was firmly entrenched as the starter during his final season with the Tigers in 2020 before becoming the first overall pick in the NFL Draft, but Uiagalelei still played in 10 games that season. The former five-star recruit made his collegiate debut in the Tigers’ opener against Georgia Tech and saw action in four of the next five games before Lawrence was diagnosed with COVID-19. That pressed Uiagalelei into his first two career starts against Boston College and Notre Dame.

“All of a sudden, D.J. had to be ready, and he had two amazing games as our starter,” Swinney said. “It was good experience for him.”

Clemson would like to get Klubnik, the program’s latest blue-chip quarterback signee, the same kind of experience early in case an injury or illness pops up or if Swinney feels he simply needs to make a change at the position at some point. With a strong arm attached to his 6-foot-4, 240-pound frame, Uiagalelei has the physical tools that scream next-level talent. Some early mock drafts for next year even have him as a first-round pick.

But Uiagalelei doesn’t enter his junior season with the same stranglehold on the starting job that Lawrence did two years ago. Uiagalelei struggled in his first season as the full-time starter, ranking in the bottom third in the ACC in completion percentage (55%) and throwing more interceptions (10) than touchdown passes (9).

“Obviously he didn’t have a great year last year individually, and we didn’t have a great year around him offensively,” Swinney said. “He’ll be better, and we’ll be better. And we’ll go from there.”

Swinney largely praised Uiagalelei’s performance throughout the spring, though he completed just 17 of 36 passes in the spring game with an interception. Meanwhile, Klubnik went 15 of 23, threw the game’s only touchdown pass and showed a different level of mobility that he used to buy more time or scramble for chunks of yardage on broken plays.

Clemson’s quarterbacks will pick the competition back up during fall camp before the Tigers open the season against Georgia Tech in Atlanta on Labor Day.

Swinney updates Clemson’s transfer portal activity

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has concluded his exit meetings with all 109 players on the Tigers’ roster coming out of the spring. Things can always change. But as of Tuesday – and with the May 1 deadline for players to enter the transfer portal and …

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has concluded his exit meetings with all 109 players on the Tigers’ roster coming out of the spring.

Things can always change. But as of Tuesday – and with the May 1 deadline for players to enter the transfer portal and maintain immediate eligibility at their next school – Swinney said none of his players have gone into the portal.

“All 109 are back,” Swinney told The Clemson Insider during the ACC spring meetings. “I don’t know how many teams – probably not very many, to be honest with you – went through spring without someone leaving. We’re probably one of the few.

“We’ve got a great group. It’s a mature group. There’s good chemistry with this team. There’s a lot of self-awareness with this team. And we’re in a good spot.”

As for any transfers Clemson may try to add from the portal, Swinney said there’s been no other movement on that front. The Tigers signed former Northwestern quarterback Hunter Johnson before the spring and are bringing in former Wingate linebacker Jesiah Carlton as a walk-on.

Swinney reiterated the only portal addition he’s interested in at this point is an experienced, plug-and-play interior offensive lineman. If Clemson was to sign a transfer at some point that entered the portal after May 1, he would need to be granted a waiver to be eligible this fall. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to suit up for the Tigers until 2023.

“To this point, there’s really not been anybody in there that fits and meets all the criteria we’re looking for,” Swinney said. “Again, we’re not going to take a guy just to take a guy.”

That leaves rising senior Will Putnam in line to take over as the starting center for the time being, which would create an opening at right guard. Swinney said he felt better about the center position coming out of the spring after watching Putnam transition well to his new position.

Swinney: College sports’ shifting landscape has ‘put more focus on my purpose’

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Dabo Swinney is frustrated and encouraged at the same time. Clemson’s veteran football coach is in northern Florida this week with some of his industry peers at the ACC’s annual spring meetings, where he’s spent chunks of …

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Dabo Swinney is frustrated and encouraged at the same time.

Clemson’s veteran football coach is in northern Florida this week with some of his industry peers at the ACC’s annual spring meetings, where he’s spent chunks of hours shuffling from one ballroom to another inside The Ritz-Carlton Hotel at Amelia Island listening in on and partaking in some of the league’s most pressing talking points. Those include name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities and regulation, the potential reformatting of future ACC schedules and possible transfer portal windows, which Swinney said he’s in favor of so that coaches can better manage their rosters.

What the latter might look like is still unclear, but Todd Berry, executive director of the American Football Coaches of America, broached the subject with coaches earlier this week of implementing more rigid timeframes for transfers to enter the portal. Athletes in fall and winter sports have until May 1 of the following year to put their names in the portal while spring-sport athletes have a July 1 deadline in order to be immediately eligible at their new school.

In other words, transfer windows don’t currently exist.

“We’ve discussed that,” Swinney told The Clemson Insider on Tuesday. “Just like the NIL, I think there needs to be some type of guidelines and some type of order so you can have some semblance of roster management.”

The NCAA took a step this week to try to regulate NIL activity, which remains Swinney’s primary frustration amid college sports’ evolving landscape. Swinney is not against athletes being able to profit off those opportunities. He reiterated it’s the unintended consequences that bother him.

“It’s being used in a way that was not intended,” Swinney said.

On Monday, college sports’ governing body took action on that front, implementing a policy that makes it illegal for boosters, including NIL collectives, to use money to entice recruits and players already enrolled that are seeking a transfer. Swinney said he believes the NCAA can find a way to realistically enforce that rule, though NIL legislation already in place at the state level as well as antitrust issues could make doing so a tricky proposition. So, in Swinney’s eyes, the lack of clarity continues.

“It’s new,” Swinney said. “I think as we get further into it, hopefully there will be some type of guidelines and some type of order because right now there is none. We’ll see where it goes.”

All of the shifting within college athletics has only added to the time coaches have to spend keeping track of what’s going on inside their respective programs. But Swinney said it hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm for the sport he’s been involved with for more than three decades or made him question how long he might continue to coach it.

“All it’s done is make me focus more and more on what my main purpose is, and that’s building great men from the game,” Swinney said. “Just helping these young people that I have the privilege to be with every day be the best version of themselves, grow, develop as men and become the best player they can be. And get their education. It’s just put more focus on my purpose.”

And as difficult as it may be for Swinney to stay patient with the process, he acknowledged change isn’t always bad. Ultimately, Swinney said he believes college football will benefit from it.

“There’s always something. You can just fill in the blank,” Swinney said. “I do think we’re dealing with more change than we’ve ever had, but I think it’s good because I think there needed to be some change. And I think over the next 18 to probably 24 months – there’s some frustration at all levels – but I think college football is ultimately going to end up at a better place. We’ll navigate our way there.”

‘We need to get like that’: Radakovich, Miami playing catchup with former program

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Dan Radakovich will soon return to a place he’s familiar with. Even when it comes to his new point of entry at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium. “I know where the visiting team buses park,” Radakovich told The Clemson Insider this …

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Dan Radakovich will soon return to a place he’s familiar with. Even when it comes to his new point of entry at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium.

“I know where the visiting team buses park,” Radakovich told The Clemson Insider this week during the ACC’s spring meetings at Amelia Island. “I’m going to try to go into that tunnel and make my way upstairs as quickly as I can.”

Radakovich is the director of athletics at the University of Miami. He’s been on the job less than six months after spending nine years in the same position at Clemson, but, for the first time since leaving Clemson in December, Radakovich will return to Clemson when the Tigers host Miami in football in late November.

“(I will) certainly say hello to a lot of great people that I’ve had the pleasure to work with over nine years,” Radakovich said.

Radakovich spent much of that time watching Clemson morph into a dominant program in the ACC. The Tigers won six straight ACC championships and made six consecutive College Football Playoff appearances from 2015-2020. They won two of the program’s three national championships during that time (2016 and 2018 seasons).

Clemson pulled off its 11th straight 10-win season last fall, a level of consistency for which Radakovich said Miami’s football program is striving. The Hurricanes, who are entering a new era under first-year coach Mario Cristobal, haven’t won more than eight games since 2017, the last time Miami played in the ACC championship game.

“Miami football right now is not at that level from a talent perspective and certainly a number of perspectives, but we aspire to that,” Radakovich said. “It’s wonderful that Clemson is that bellwether for everyone in the league to look at (and say) we need to get like that. And I think, inside that room, there’s a lot of athletic directors who’ve said that and continue to say that.”

NIL not the only major talking point at ACC spring meetings

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Name, image and likeness is a hot topic in the world of college athletics, and understandably so. Student-athletes have had opportunities to profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL) since last summer when the NCAA …

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Name, image and likeness is a hot topic in the world of college athletics, and understandably so.

Student-athletes have had opportunities to profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL) since last summer when the NCAA adopted an interim policy making it legal for them to do so. Less than a year later, though, college sports’ governing body has already added more guidelines in an effort to curtail the unintended consequences.

NIL collectives have popped up at schools nationwide as a way for boosters and businesses to pool their money to facilitate NIL deals with athletes currently enrolled at their schools. But to the surprise of no one, some groups are using collective funds to persuade recruits to sign with their schools.

On Monday, the NCAA released NIL guidelines prohibiting collectives from paying players who haven’t yet signed with a school as well as current student-athletes looking to transfer. The announcement came late Monday afternoon while ACC athletic directors and coaches convened for the first day of the league’s annual spring meetings.

Clemson athletic director Graham Neff said the updated bylaws help provide some clarity as to what is and isn’t allowed in the NIL world, but with many states having their own NIL legislation and potential antitrust concerns, whether or not the NCAA’s perceived crackdown turns into anything more than a threat remains to be seen.

“I think everyone in there is eager to see what the feedback is like from the board and how we can implement it,” Clemson athletic director Graham Neff said.

NIL may have been a major talking point, but it wasn’t the only one athletic directors discussed while meeting for more than three hours inside a ballroom at The Ritz-Carlton on Monday on Amelia Island. There was also “lots of football scheduling discussion” that could result in the elimination of the Atlantic and Coastal divisions, Neff said.

Like every other Football Bowl Subdivision conference, the ACC has an annual title game that pits division winners against each other, a format the league has used to determine its champion since expanding to 14 teams in 2005. But thanks to another potential change to the rules, that may not be the case much longer.

The NCAA’s Football Oversight Committee is recommending legislation to remove FBS requirements for teams to play in their respective conference championship games. If the recommendation gets approved later this week as expected, how a champion is decided would be left to the discretion of the individual conferences, which could eliminate divisions and leave the teams with the two highest conference winning percentages to play for the title.

Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich said he’s on board with that possibility.

“I think the two best teams in the league having an opportunity to play is really important,” Radakovich said. “You can spin the opportunity to get to a championship game just as you can spin the opportunity to win a division. I think if we’ve done it this way before, if there’s good reason for us to alter our schedule where no divisions come into play because we want our student-athletes to play more people within the league, then I think it’s something we should take a look at and certainly give a try.”

As for what a new scheduling model would look like without divisions, Neff nor Radakovich detailed that to The Clemson Insider. But, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, there are a couple that would keep the league schedule at eight games that are possible: two permanent opponents and six that rotate on and off the slate every other year or three permanent opponents and five that rotate on and off every other year.