In addition to its ongoing exploration of adding Stanford and Cal, the ACC is set to discuss an expansion scenario in which it also adds SMU at a meeting of league athletic directors tonight, a source briefed on the conference’s plans confirmed to The Athletic. Yahoo Sports first reported the development. Here’s what you need to know:
- ACC athletic directors met Monday, followed by league presidents on Tuesday morning, to discuss the possibility of adding Stanford and Cal, but no vote on the issue was taken. Another meeting of ACC athletic directors is scheduled for Tuesday evening.
- SMU, a member of the American Athletic Conference since its current version formed in 2013, has been outside a major power conference since the Southwest Conference dissolved in 1996.
- The Mustangs were reported to be a Pac-12 expansion target earlier this year, and in February Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff visited the school and was spotted speaking with SMU administrators during a Mustangs basketball game.
The Athletic’s instant analysis:
Why the ACC is exploring these targets now
There’s opportunity. The league has been quiet on the realignment front over the past three years as their peers have made landscape-shifting moves, but commissioner Jim Phillips has said that he’s open to exploring all new potential revenue streams. He will still need to get his members on board with any and all additions — and satisfactorily address the additional travel costs that would accompany them — but at this juncture in the realignment shuffle, there appears to be strength in numbers. That philosophy holds doubly true if any members who have talked about leaving the ACC (as Florida State has in recent weeks and months) actually do depart. SMU is an interesting candidate to consider without a travel partner, but the profile of the school makes a lot of sense for this ACC. The academics of Stanford and Cal need no explanation. — Auerbach
SMU’s role in realignment
Ever since Oklahoma and Texas announced their move to the SEC in 2021, SMU has aggressively tried to find a path to a power conference. The Mustangs have had conversations with the ACC in recent years and engaged in a public dance with the Pac-12 earlier this year when commissioner George Kliavkoff visited campus and attended a basketball game. The Mustangs sometimes found those leagues more willing to listen than the Big 12, which didn’t have much interest in another Texas school.
SMU’s pitch is that it could bring ACC Network carriage fees into Texas, it’s a private school with good academics and it has a boatload of money. Thanks to deep-pocketed donors, SMU is building a $100 million end zone facility and is in some cases lapping Group of 5 competitors in the NIL market. The idea that SMU could withstand years as a lesser-share member of a power conference, with boosters filling in the gap, has also come up in realignment discussions.
The Mustangs haven’t had their national coming-out party as a national contender on the scale of UCF or Cincinnati, and they don’t have a large fan base, but people around SMU believe its resources could elevate the school in a major way, like the old Pony Express days of the 1980s, if the school could just get back into a power conference. — Vannini
Backstory
After Colorado left the Pac-12 for the Big 12, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN that he was open to expansion.
Last week, in the wake of Oregon and Washington bolting from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten, the ACC and Pac-12 had discussions about five or seven of the Pac-12’s remaining schools joining the ACC, according to two people briefed on the leagues’ discussions. A meeting was scheduled Friday but never took place after Arizona, Arizona State and Utah decided to leave the Pac-12 for the Big 12. No offers were made, two league sources said.
Stanford and Cal, along with Oregon State and Washington State, have been scrambling to solidify their future since the departure of those five teams in rapid succession.
(Photo: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)