Texts between Cunningham and Guskiewicz show ACC talks about expanding to Big 10 or Pac 12

New texts retrieved by The Charlotte Observer show discussions about UNC and the future of ACC as a conference.

When the college sports world was rocked in late June with UCLA and USC bolting the Pac-12 and heading to the Big 10, it signaled a seismic shift in athletics. Eventually, conferences are going to look different and if you’re not on board now, you’re going to get left behind.

We saw rumors regarding UNC and what they would do. Would they leave the ACC? Would the conference try to form a super conference somewhere else?

Now, a few months later some texts released by UNC to The Charlotte Observer’s Andrew Carter show discussions between UNC AD Bubba Cunningham and university chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and what the ACC talked about in a meeting the next day. Among the biggest things in those texts was this:

In his text message conversation with Guskiewicz on June 30, Cunningham went over how Phillips was likely to address the ACC’s presidents and chancellors during their conference call the next morning. One of the talking points, as Cunningham described it:

“Should we explore a partnership with the Big 12 or Pac 12(?)”

Guskiewicz was intrigued: “We could have a super conference both athletically and academically,” he responded. “Probably would need to be called the Atlantic-Pacific Athletic Conference (APAC). Maybe that’s crazy, but if it would get us a better TV deal, it may be worth considering.”

“We need to think about what outcomes we want?” Cunningham wrote back. “What are our priorities? Do we want to maintain all teams in the ACC? Is this a new league? Do we want to have the same number of teams at each school?

“Should we play a national schedule or regional schedule?”

Interesting.

There’s a lot more info in Carter’s piece, which I highly recommend you read at some point. For now, talks appear to be mum but they should start to heat up as more expansion is likely coming across the country.

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