Tag: conference realignment

247Sports projects where Clemson will land in college football’s realignment

With Clemson and FSU’s lawsuits against the ACC, college football realignment remains a hot topic.

College football’s conference realignment seemingly happened quickly, and expectations are that more moves will be made at some point. 

This felt evident with the Florida State Seminoles suing the ACC, but things got even more clear when the Clemson Tigers did the same. With the two top members of the ACC showing they want change or want out of the conference as a whole, things get even more interesting. 

One of the biggest questions surrounding Clemson and realignment revolves around where the Tigers would land if they were to leave the ACC. Recently, 247Sports made their prediction. 

Projection: SEC

Clemson’s made it clear it doesn’t want to be left behind as a revenue-driver in the ACC and the SEC best seems like a fit.”

Clemson routinely comes up in SEC conversations as one of the league’s next primary targets. The Tigers are one of the “Big 3” football powers in the ACC, joining Florida State and Miami, and they’re the only ones with national championship hardware to show for it in recent years.

Clemson to the SEC would make the most sense, considering all of the factors of location, teams in the conference, and history they have with some of those teams. While you can’t count the Big Ten out, there is a strong likelihood it would be the SEC who landed the Tigers.

This is all speculation, but it could be reality before we know it.

Looking for thoughts on conference realignment? Don’t ask Clemson’s Brad Brownell

If you’re looking for the latest insight into conference realignment, don’t ask Clemson Tigers basketball coach Brad Brownell — at least not now.

Clemson coach Brad Brownell has been an outspoken advocate for his league all season when it comes to the perception of the quality of play in the ACC being inferior to other conferences, most notably the Big 12.

But that was all about on-the-court business and basketball in general.

It doesn’t mean that Brownell has any thoughts on the latest talk of conference realignment — even when it directly involves the school whose basketball program he’s now in his 14th season at the helm of.

Brownell was asked by a reporter at Thursday’s scheduled NCAA Tournament press conference about the latest talks swirling around the future of the ACC after Clemson attorneys filed suit against the league in open court earlier this week.

Clemson joined Florida State, which brought its own lawsuit against the league back in December, in schools that are challenging the ACC’s Grant of Rights agreement that runs through 2036.

“I’m not involved in any of that,” Brownell said Thursday. “There’s a lot of folks on our campus much smarter than me that are leading our university: Graham Neff, our athletic director; Jim Clements, our president, our board. We have great leadership at our school. They’re handling that. My head’s been down. They’ve not called me one time to ask me my opinion. Thankfully, I’m focused on New Mexico.”

When asked if he had an opinions on it, Brownell said that it was “too important” for him to be involved in.

Brownell led the Tigers (21-11) to the program’s fourth NCAA Tournament appearance under his watch this season. Clemson will face Mountain West Tournament champion New Mexico (26-9) at 3:10 p.m. EDT Friday in the West Region at Memphis’ FedExForum. The game will be televised by truTV.

ACC legal battles could open door for more Big Ten expansion

If the ACC crumbles, the Big Ten could be ready to pounce on a few potential members.

If you thought the Big Ten was going to settle in an 18-team membership following this year’s additions of Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington, you are probably fooling yourself. Expansion could be looming on the horizon once again if things in the ACC continue on the path they seem to be heading.

Florida State previously opened a significant legal battle challenging the ACC on its grant of rights. If Florida State is successful, it would open the doors for a potential mass exodus from the ACC to the Big Ten or SEC in a similar fashion to what happened in the Pac-12, although perhaps not quite as devastating in the grand scheme.

Florida State is not alone in its legal challenge of the ACC, however. Clemson officially joined the battle this week with its own lawsuit filed in South Carolina, potentially opening the door for Clemson and Florida State to carve a path to leave the ACC in search of greener pastures in the Big Ten or SEC. And if Clemson and Florida State do force their way out, then it stands to reason others in the ACC would explore their options as well, including North Carolina.

And, of course, this somehow all gets back to the future of Notre Dame as well.

SEC Network analyst and radio host Paul Finebaum created a stir suggesting Notre Dame is inching closer and closer to having to make a big decision on its future with football independence or conference membership. As Finebaum suggests, and something I’ve been saying for years, at some point Notre Dame’s leaders will have to realize that it is far more profitable and beneficial for the school to be a member of a conference than it is to be an independent. Considering the revenue shares that Big Ten and SEC schools receive compare to the revenue Notre Dame football generates, it has to fiscal sense to at least strongly consider ditching football independence in the evolving world of college sports.

This would especially be true if the ACC cracks with its membership. Notre Dame is a member of the ACC in most of its other sports (although it is a Big Ten school in ice hockey), but if members start leaving the ACC, it would make sense for Notre Dame to look for a more stable future.

The Big Ten would be the natural landing spot for Notre Dame, one might think. This is especially true if a crumbling ACC loses Stanford and Cal to the Big Ten amid potential realignment changes. The Big Ten adding Stanford, Cal, North Carolina, and Notre Dame would be a decent haul overall.

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Conference realignment: Where does Clemson land in potential post-ACC world?

If Clemson University and its lawyers are successfully able to challenge the ACC’s Grant of Rights and leave the league, where would the Tigers most likely join in the next wave of conference realignment?

What happens if Clemson and Florida State are successful in their respective attempts to leave the ACC?

Does Miami, North Carolina, Duke and others follow them to one of the new “Power 2” conferences or to the Big 12?

Does the ACC continue on in a watered-down way without its biggest football powers and perhaps become a basketball-only league, à la the Big East?

Most importantly to Clemson fans and others looking at a potential/inevitable ACC collapse with a vested interest, what conference would the Tigers be most likely to join?

247Sports’ Brad Crawford and others have pondered that last question and posited that the SEC is the most likely landing spot for Clemson, if the school and its attorneys are able to break the ACC’s Grant of Rights agreement.

A potential Clemson move to the SEC would hardly come as a shock. The Tigers offer the league a lot in terms of recent on-field success — namely, they’re the only ACC program that played in the four-team College Football Playoff from 2015-2023.

Clemson would also be a natural fit in the SEC both geographically and culturally, as would another ACC school that 247Sports predicts would land in commissioner Greg Sankey’s league.

Report: Clemson attorneys “gearing up” for legal action, possible ACC split

Could Clemson be planning an exit from the ACC? In a wide-ranging report from Yahoo Sports on the state of college football Friday, Clemson leaving the ACC with several other current conference members is floated as a possibility by veteran college football reporter Ross Dellenger.

Could Clemson be planning an exit from the ACC?

In a wide-ranging report from Yahoo Sports on the state of college football, Clemson leaving the ACC with several other current conference members is floated as a possibility by veteran college football reporter Ross Dellenger.

Much of Dellenger’s story centers on College Football Playoff expansion and revenue distribution. It also mentions growing unrest by several ACC schools over their dissatisfaction with the league, including Clemson.

Last May, Dellenger reported that seven ACC schools met to discuss a possible exit strategy from the ACC. At issue was the league’s equal revenue-sharing model, which the seven schools oppose.

Clemson was mentioned in concert with Florida State, Miami, North Carolina, NC State, Virginia, and Virginia Tech as schools that met during the ACC’s annual spring meetings in 2023 to discuss exploring ways to challenge the league’s grant-of-rights document in an effort to leave the conference.

Those schools, purportedly led by Florida State and Clemson, later endorsed a plan that advocated for larger payouts by the ACC to schools based on on-field performance/success in postseason play. Clemson and FSU are the only ACC schools that reached the four-team College Football Playoff from 2014-2023.

Now, months after Florida State filed a lawsuit against the ACC in open court over the school’s desire to leave the conference, Dellenger reports that Clemson has also consulted with its own attorneys to discuss legal options.

Per Dellenger’s story:

Attorneys for Clemson have spent the last several months gearing up for legal action of their own, sources with knowledge of the discussions tell Yahoo Sports.

More secession attempts could send the conference into chaos. The outcomes of any Florida State or Clemson exit — can they break free of the grant-of-rights? — may chart a path for the other members of the seven, most notably North Carolina, the most attractive of the (other) programs.

Dellenger’s report noted that a date was looming as a possible turning point for the league and the seven ACC schools.

While ESPN’s contract with the ACC extends through 2036, the network has the option to opt out of the final nine years starting in 2027, a way that ESPN itself could possibly reopen the grant-of-rights, or at the very least, restructure the deal.

Could a restructured deal with uneven distribution prevent more departures? Would an ESPN opt-out swing open the door for more schools to exit?

The network must exercise the option by February 2025.

Where the seven ACC schools could potentially go, should they leave the conference, is a topic of much discourse. But in Clemson’s case, it’s hard to imagine the SEC wouldn’t be interested in adding Dabo Swinney’s program.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has thus far expressed reluctance, at least publicly, on the potential addition of new conference members after his league’s ground-shaking announcement in 2021 that it planned to add Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12. The Longhorns and Sooners will become SEC members later this year.

But that was before the Big Ten added USC and UCLA in 2022 and before Oregon and Washington joined the conference a year later amid the complete collapse of the Pac-12.

Since then, the “haves and have-nots” of college football keep growing further apart. Dellenger repeatedly underscores that in his report by reinforcing that the SEC and Big Ten are now college football’s “Power Two” conferences.

He adds that a new College Football Playoff revenue-distribution model is being floated that could widen the gap even further between the leagues by distributing “millions in additional revenue” to the SEC and Big Ten, far outweighing what the ACC and Big 12 would receive.

In a proposal socialized with administrators this week, the Big Ten and SEC would combine to earn about 58% of the CFP’s base distribution — a figure that will certainly grow in participation distribution as their individual schools earn more revenue for qualifying and advancing through the playoffs. The figure would greatly exceed the ACC and Big 12’s combined distribution number, which is expected to be around 31%. The remaining amount (roughly 10%) will be distributed to Notre Dame and the 64 Group of Five teams.

February 2025, the possible inflection date, is now less than a year away. And as we’ve learned time and again since the start of conference realignment, the whispers, rumor mills, and overall uncertainty about the future of college football are only going to ratchet up even more over the next several months.

How could the SEC align its permanent rivals with the additions of Oklahoma and Texas?

If it went to a nine-game conference schedule, how could the permanent rivals line up for an expanded SEC.

The SEC is dealing with one of those good problems. As the conference prepares to expand to 16 schools with the addition of Oklahoma and Texas, SEC leadership is debating how to construct its schedule. In 2024 and most likely in 2025, the SEC will play eight conference games as they work out the details for what could come down the road.

Despite settling on eight games in the short term, the format that has received the most buzz has each team facing three permanent rivals each season as part of the nine-game conference schedule. The other six games would come from a rotation featuring the remaining 12 teams in the conference.

While there are some obvious permanent rivals for some teams, others aren’t so clear. It’s not an easy proposition, but it’s the one that would have each SEC team playing each other every two years.

This scheduling model is attractive because it sets up a school to play every other SEC program over a two-year cycle, with both home and away games against every other school over a four-year cycle. Year 1 will have a team’s three annual rivals plus six other SEC opponents. Those six are then rotated out for the rest of the conference in Year 2, allowing for games against all 15 conference foes. – Chip Patterson, CBS Sports

So, over a two-year span, Oklahoma will face every team in the conference. Over a four-year span, they will have hosted every team in the conference.

One of the complaints with the current format is the reality that an SEC may not play host to another for more than a decade. For example, Texas A&M hasn’t hosted Georgia despite being in the same conference for 10 seasons and only played the Bulldogs once in that time frame. The format getting the most consideration would fix that.

Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte spoke at a Longhorns town hall about the future of the SEC schedule. Del Conte mentioned that it’s a work in progress, but by 2026, the SEC could be at a nine-game conference schedule.

No format will leave everyone happy, but here’s a take on how the permanent rivals could align in the expanded SEC.

Florida State took a giant step toward a potential departure from the ACC

If it hasn’t been made abundantly clear by now, Florida State REALLY wants to leave the ACC behind.

It feels like the idea of Florida State making a move out of the ACC had been dangling about for over a decade. But now, the discussion feels more real than it has ever felt before.

On Friday, Florida State trustees voted unanimously in favor of suing the ACC over the legality of the conference’s grant of rights and withdrawal fees, the two strongest reasons why the ACC has held on stable ground in the recent shifts of conference realignment changes. But Florida State supporters have long felt those were merely hurdles yet to be cleared. Now, Florida State is backing up the talk with actions.

In short, Florida State is filing a lawsuit with the hope of having the grant of rights and withdrawal fee voided, thus making it easier to swiftly move to a new conference. Which conference that would be, of course, remains to be seen, but you had have to expect the Big Ten would be mentioned as a possibility. And if Florida State cracks the door open with this lawsuit, other ACC members could follow the lead of Florida State. And some of those options could be interesting expansion candidates if the Big Ten keeps an eye open for additional expansion moves.

The Big Ten is already set to add four new members in 2024 from the Pac-12; Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington. That will bring the total membership count up to 18 full-time members, which equals the number of teams in the soon-to-be-expanded SEC with the additions of Oklahoma and Texas in 2024. The Big 12 scooped up more members from the collapsing Pac-12 (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah), and California and Stanford are set to join the ACC, ironically. The last two Pac-12 members, Oregon State and Washington State, are hoping to continue carrying the Pac-12 banner while organizing affiliate memberships and scheduling agreements for football and other sports.

Talks of Florida State’s frustrations with its ACC membership are nothing new. They have been bubbling ever since the first wave of seismic realignment changes that saw Texas A&M and Missouri leave the Big 12 for the SEC, Nebraska for the Big Ten, and Colorado for the Pac-12. The pair of Florida State and Clemson have typically been thrown together as an expansion candidate duo for the Big 12, SEC, and Big Ten. But to this point, the SEC has supposedly said it is fine where it sits now. The Big Ten will sell that message too with its last batch of expansion efforts, although it would be expected the Big Ten offices would at least entertain a phone call with Florida State leaders if the school came looking for a new home.

The Big 12 may be the most likely option for Florida State if the program does find a way out of the ACC, although it may lack the profits and revenue Florida State ultimately desires that would be offered with membership in the Big Ten or SEC.

This may ultimately lead to nothing if a court rules in favor of the ACC, and Florida State willingly signing off on the conference’s grant of rights and withdraw terms seems like a possible open-and-shut case to some, in which case Florida State’s frustrations will continue and grow louder and louder.

But if Florida State gets its way, could the school be the next big expansion move for the Big Ten?

FSU Board of Trustees likely to discuss bolting from the ACC on Friday

Well this makes things interesting.

It appears that the next domino in conference realignment is about to fall. The Florida State University Board of Trustees has called a virtual meeting for Friday at 10 a.m. ET.

The expectation is that the BOT will approve a legal filing in their bid to leave the ACC. It is public knowledge that leadership at the university has been very unhappy with the conference. Given how much revenue FSU generates, they believe they deserve a bigger piece of the pie. They aren’t the only ones as Clemson is another team unhappy with the ACC.

The exit from the ACC will be a costly one. In August, the Associated Press reported that the fee is roughly three times the annual revenue which equates to about $120 million. In the 2021-22 year, the conference paid out roughly $39 million per school.

Florida State President Rick McCullough called for action unless there is “radical change to revenue distribution.”

“We are not satisfied with our current situation,” the FSU president said. “We love the ACC and our partners at ESPN. Our goal would be to stay in the ACC, but staying in the ACC under the current situation is hard for us to figure out how to remain competitive unless there were a major change in the revenue distribution. That has not happened.”

When the Seminoles were left out of the College Football Playoff, this felt like the most likely solution in their minds. That was just another log thrown on the “let’s get out of the ACC” fire.

The ACC is set to welcome California, SMU, and Stanford to the conference in time for the 2024 season. Should FSU make a move from the ACC, we will likely see more action from Clemson, Miami, and North Carolina.

WCC to add Oregon State and Washington State in basketball for next two years

The WCC is expected to vote to confirm Oregon State and Washington State as affiliate members for the next two seasons, giving Gonzaga a regional rivalry with the Cougars.

The expectation has long been that Oregon State and Washington State, the two remaining Pac-12 programs, would merge with the Mountain West Conference in all sports. After all, the two sides already reached a scheduling agreement for football, and line up as logical geographic and athletic partners in most sports.

However, reported logistical and ongoing legal concerns made a move difficult, and instead the two programs will reportedly join the West Coast Conference as affiliate members – playing a conference schedule in all sports except football and baseball – for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons, according to Matt Norlander of CBS.

League presidents and athletic directors are expected to vote and approve the measure on Thursday morning. This move will bring the WCC from nine schools to 11, helping alleviate the recent loss of BYU and bringing more brand recognition and scheduling appeal to the conference while they attempt to hold on to powerhouse basketball program Gonzaga, who have been in realignment rumors with the Big 12 for nearly a year now.

This move creates a regional rivalry between Gonzaga and Washington State, located 75 miles from each other in Eastern Washington, and while neither WSU or OSU are particularly elite at men’s basketball they add to the depth of the conference.

The addition of the Cougars and Beavers will inflate the league’s basketball schedule to 18 or 20, according to Norlander, and tweaks to the WCC Tournament format are likely coming as well – while financial payouts for NCAA Tournament units have not been disclosed.

Mountain West discussing adding Oregon State and Washington State for basketball

The Mountain West is in discussions with Oregon State and Washington State to join as a basketball member starting in 2024-25.

The Mountain West recently reached a scheduling agreement with the two remaining Pac-12 schools, Oregon State and Washington State, so it is no surprise the parties are now in discussion to work together in basketball as well.

A source told CBS’ Jon Rothstein the Mountain West and Oregon State and Washington State are in discussions to join the league for the 2024-25 college basketball season, which would provide the two programs with a home following the final year of Pac-12 play in 2023-24.

Details are sparse for right now, with Rothstein indicating there is no timetable for an official announcement. Whether this agreement would extend beyond 2024-25, potentially into full membership, is one of many details unknown at the moment – including if other non-revenue generating sports, like baseball, women’s soccer, softball, and tennis – are being discussed.

The Mountain West is certainly a formidable basketball conference, currently boasting five programs in the top 50 of the NET on the men’s side in Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, Utah State, and Nevada, as well as two on the women’s side in UNLV and Colorado State.

Washington State is No. 27 in the NET on the men’s side and No. 28 on the women’s side, as of this writing, making them an appealing addition for the Mountain West.

Oregon State is No. 35 on the women’s side but the men’s team has really struggled the last few years under coach Wayne Tinkle. They are currently 5-3 on the season and ranked 187th in the NET.

Still, adding two well-known brands who are obvious geographic fits will boost the conference’s on-court product and will have a positive impact financially, and represents a soft landing spot for the two programs who were left out to dry by the 10 other Pac-12 programs in this summer’s conference realignment.