Tag: Stanford Cal ACC

Florida State files lawsuit against ACC — should Stanford and Cal feel safe right now?

This could get really wild.

As soon as Florida State was snubbed in the College Football Playoff selection process, a lot of people who follow college football realized how big a deal that was. It was clear that Florida State wasn’t just going to sit down and quietly accept that ruling. The Seminoles were unbeaten as a Power Five conference champion, and yet they got left out. Alabama, which lost a game, got in over the Seminoles.

Florida State — the school — was mad at ESPN. It was mad at the SEC. It was also mad that its own conference, the ACC, is viewed as second-rate compared to the SEC and therefore played a role in the big snub. The Seminoles had already expressed a lot of dissatisfaction with the ACC. The playoff snub made sure they were going to try to leave the ACC as soon as possible.

Now we have news which affirms that point. Florida State has in fact filed a lawsuit against the ACC. It’s a move to get out of the conference and blow up the existing conference structure. It raises the point of whether Stanford and Cal should feel safe in the ACC. It raises the point of whether this whole realignment map is going to remain intact. So many questions exist.

Here are the main details to know about, from Pete Thamel of ESPN and others. Everyone across the country is reacting to this:

Florida State playoff snub could destroy the ACC, completely reshape realignment again

Realignment could spin furiously after the Florida State controversy. We’ll explain.

The snub of Florida State in the College Football Playoff was, first and foremost, a playoff story. Who is in and who is out? That was the most immediate drama on Sunday. If Florida State had been included, it would have been a much quieter Sunday than what we actually had. Because a 13-0 Power Five conference champion was excluded from the playoff, however, a true firestorm erupted. This was unprecedented in the playoff era, which dates back to 2014. The selection committee crossed a bright red line.

The fact that the snubbed team just happened to be from the ACC, and that the SEC benefited from the ACC getting snubbed, is an explosive event not just in the realm of the playoff and the bowl schedule, but in the realm of realignment. There’s a lot to talk about here.

Let’s dive in:

USC-Stanford game was the end of an era; the schools will travel far apart

USC and Stanford won’t meet in 2024. USC goes to the #B1G and Stanford goes to the #ACC. Who knows when they’ll meet next?

The Stanford-USC football series has a lot of history behind it. The first meeting was in 1905. The schools played regularly since 1919. From 1925 through 2019, the only three years the schools didn’t meet in football were the last three years of World War II, from 1943 through 1945. The schools met every year from 1946 through 2019 before the 2020 COVID-19 season interrupted the rivalry.

Now, after USC’s win over the Cardinal on Saturday night, the series’ future is uncertain. There won’t be a game between the schools in 2024, and no future meeting has been scheduled. These California-based schools aren’t that far apart, but Stanford will now fly to the far-away places of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

How far? Look at the numbers for the Trees, who will branch out to Boston and Miami and the other locales of their new conference next year:

Stanford and Cal in the ACC? Surely this isn’t a long-term solution for college sports

Yes, Stanford and Cal needed to join the ACC to avoid a financial hit, but if Florida State leaves the ACC, what happens then?

Stanford and Cal found their lifeboat. They got to the Good Ship ACC and were rescued. They received blankets, hot coffee, and sandwiches. They were taken care of and will survive. Truly and genuinely: Good for them. They weren’t stranded, unlike Washington State and Oregon State.

However, life in the ACC is not going to be completely stable. Florida State wants out of the ACC, and the Seminoles seem to view their situation as a matter of when, not if, they will depart the conference. What will happen then?

If Florida State does leave, that’s a big hit to the ACC football brand. Clemson might want to leave for the SEC. North Carolina could become a central Big Ten target, and Duke might join the Tar Heels. Remember: Former Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany is a North Carolina alumnus. UNC to the Big Ten is not a ridiculous scenario, certainly not in comparison to Stanford and Cal going to the ACC.

Realignment might have slowed down for now, with the only short-term question being the fate of Washington State and Oregon State. However, Florida State is likely to leave the ACC in the next several years. What happens when the Seminoles pack their bags?

People are still bewildered by Stanford and Cal going to the ACC, as you can see below. When you look at how people are processing all of these wild developments, it is clear that no one thinks this is a healthy, sensible way to arrange college sports. Surely we can all do a lot better than this:

Cal is in the ACC because of Stanford, much as UCLA is in the Big Ten due to USC

The folks in Berkeley might not like Stanford, but they should be thankful the Cardinal carried them to the ACC. It’s the only reason they found safe harbor.

One of the basic lessons of college sports realignment: It pays to have a travel buddy with a lot of dollars and clout. Just ask UCLA. Go to Berkeley and ask California.

UCLA would not be in the Big Ten if USC didn’t exist and have a world-class football program. UCLA was the tag-along travel partner which got invited onto the Big Ten plane because USC had the box-office appeal Fox Sports wanted. All that extra television money offered by Fox was due to USC’s presence in college football. As good as UCLA basketball is, the Bruins don’t drive the bus. They rode USC’s coattails and got on board the Big Ten charter flight.

It’s very much the same with Cal and Stanford in the ACC. Stanford did the heavy lifting. Stanford has the massive endowment and a financial house which is fundamentally in order, unlike Cal. Stanford lobbied hard for this ACC move. Cal, its leadership and administration in disarray, was quiet and relatively impotent in this larger series of events. Stanford carried Cal to the ACC, and that’s not something anyone would reasonably dispute.

UCLA and Cal can thank USC and Stanford for giving them a new conference home in the wake of the Pac-12 splintering and dying.

Let’s look at more elements and plot points attached to the reality that Cal is going to the ACC:

North Carolina State changed its vote on Stanford, Cal, SMU joining the ACC

Reporting from Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! reveals N.C. State changed its vote from no to yes, giving the ACC enough votes to pass the Stanford-Cal-SMU plan.

We mentioned in August that North Carolina State was holding back the Stanford-Cal-SMU expansion vote for the ACC. The conference had 11 yes votes out of 15, but that was short of the 75-percent threshold needed to approve the plan. The ACC needed 12 votes. It had to change an 11-4 vote total to a 12-3 vote total.

Reporting from Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports reveals that North Carolina State was indeed the school which changed its position:

“’What does this do to the political landscape of NC State and UNC?’ asks one official working in the state.

“NC State’s football team and athletic administration arrived home after 3 a.m. Friday after playing Thursday night at UConn to open the 2023 season. Four hours later, the school casts the deciding vote.

“’It is insane,’ says one ACC athletic administrator.”

Reaction to the ACC approving the Stanford-Cal-SMU expansion plan was colorful and explosive. In a world of surprises, no one should be surprised about that particular detail:

Twitter reaction to Stanford, Cal and SMU joining the ACC

Stanford and Cal will play conference games vs Florida State, Miami, Clemson, Boston College, and Syracuse. Really smart, right?

Stanford and Cal-Berkeley will soon be in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Few sentences in the English language sound more absurd or ridiculous. Yet, that will be the new reality of college sports before too long.

The Trees of Palo Alto and the Bears of Berkeley will be part of a conference which includes the cities of Coral Gables, Florida; Tallahassee, Florida; Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts; Syracuse, New York; Pittsburgh; Clemson, South Carolina; Blacksburg, Virginia; Charlottesville, Virginia; and four locales in the state of North Carolina.

Normal, rational, logical stuff, right? None of this is logical, but it was the obvious play for Stanford if we assume the Big Ten Conference simply wasn’t interested in adding the Cardinal. The rationale from the ACC side is not as readily obvious for most college sports fans, but the conference will get some more television money from ESPN with these additions. Florida State fans would respond by saying the added money is nowhere near enough for the Seminoles to be satisfied with their current position in the ACC.

Welcome to the absurdity of college sports realignment. Reaction on social media, as you can imagine, was all over the map, which is a great way of describing Stanford and Cal going to the ACC:

Stanford, Cal and SMU put Western and Southwestern flavor into Atlantic Coast Conference

What was the #Pac12 is down to the Pac-2. Oregon State and Washington State have been left in the cold.

The next big domino to fall in conference realignment was Stanford. Where would the Cardinal land after Oregon and Washington moved to the Big Ten and the Four Corners schools moved to the Big 12? The Pac-12 splintered and died, leaving behind anarchy in college sports realignment and forcing Stanford and Cal to scramble for an alternative solution.

More than a week ago, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mike Silver was first with the news that Stanford, Cal and SMU were likely headed to the ACC. Other outlets then confirmed the story.

Reaction was swift and opinionated, as you could readily imagine.

Then came Friday morning’s report from Ross Dellenger that Stanford, Cal, and SMU had been voted into the ACC. The 11-4 vote blocking the move — the ACC needed 12 votes to approve — did not hold the line. One concession was all it took.

Let’s look at some of the more salient points about the ACC’s situation, Stanford and Cal’s new reality, the SMU angle, and the unfortunate turn of events for Oregon State and Washington State, which now represent the Pac-2 and will almost certainly have to settle for some sort of arrangement with the Mountain West Conference:

Comments by Utah coach Kyle Whittingham on realignment have everyone talking

Before the ACC votes on adding #Stanford, #Cal, and #SMU, #Utah’s football coach wondered how permanent all of this will be.

A few days ago, Utah football head coach Kyle Whittingham made some newsworthy remarks in a conversation with Utah-based radio host and podcaster Spence Checketts.

Whittingham was discussing the future of the BYU-Utah football rivalry, but what he said about that game also flowed into the larger discussion of college sports conference realignment.

It’s a much longer conversation, so you will want to listen to the full show to get the complete context. That said, this one paragraph is impossible to ignore. It reasonably caused a stir:

“Well, first of all, you use the word permanently, and I can say it’s far from that,” Whittingham said. “I think in two-to-three, maybe five years at the outside, everything is gonna change again. And so this may be just a quick couple years of the game (BYU-Utah) returning, and then everything is blown up again and people go their separate ways.”

Since BYU-Utah will be a conference game in the Big 12, people will obviously wonder what Whittingham thinks about the structure of conference realignment in several years. It is reasonable to think that a lot of changes (Florida State and Clemson to the SEC, for example) will occur. How far these changes spread is obviously something we’ll all wonder about.

Let’s gather some reactions to Whittingham’s comments and then make a few extra points at the very end:

Former Fox Sports executive explains how Pac-12 miscalculated and killed itself

The executive noted that the $ ESPN and Fox are paying to relocated #Pac12 schools is more than the $30M per school the Pac turned down in 2022.

Bob Thompson is a former Fox Sports television executive. He is a voice of experience in television negotiations, particularly in college sports media rights battles such as the recent Pac-12 theater of the absurd that wound up killing the conference.

When the Pac-12 rejected ESPN’s 2022 deal, it ignored Thompson’s specific advise and expertise. Thompson had estimated the value of a Pac-12 package without USC and UCLA at $30 million per school per year. That dollar figure is what the Pac-12 rejected last year in the hope of a $50 million moonshot. If the Pac-12 had taken ESPN’s deal, it would be alive and stable today.

Thompson cited that $30 million per school figure in an illuminating set of social media posts. Let’s share that thread and offer a few other notes from fans in ACC markets who are thinking about whether inviting Stanford and Cal is a good idea: