5 unanswered questions as Cal, Stanford join ACC, escape Pac-12

Cal and Stanford fans awoke Friday morning to their teams in a new conference.

The ACC’s presidents and chancellors decided around 5 a.m. PT on Friday to add the two Bay Area schools in 2024, along with Southern Methodist University, to their conference in a 12-3 vote, according to multiple reports. Cal and Stanford were two of four remaining schools — along with Oregon State and Washington State — in the Pac-12, which has seen all of its other members depart for either the Big Ten or Big 12.

“We are very pleased with the outcome, which will support the best interests of our student-athletes and aligns with Berkeley’s values,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ said Friday.

“ACC membership aligns Stanford with a conference of leading peer institutions who share a deep history of athletic success and a commitment to the pursuit of academic excellence,” Jerry Yang, chair of the Stanford University Board of Trustees, added. “We appreciate the invitation of the ACC member schools, and we are excited to join them.”

It didn’t exactly look like this story would have a happy ending — if that’s what one can call this — for the Golden Bears and Cardinal. Earlier this month, a decision to bring in the two schools was stalled because not enough ACC members were in favor of the invitation. Cal and Stanford needed 12 out of a possible 15 votes to get in, but there were four holdouts in North Carolina, NC State, Clemson and Florida State. Things started looking up only over the past week or so. NC State was ultimately the program that flipped, according to multiple reports.

The question of how the two programs would get off the sinking Pac-12 ship has been answered, but that doesn’t mean everything has been resolved. Keep in mind that this decision was made with football at the forefront and everything else falling way behind. There are also issues of finances, travel and who gets to keep the copper wiring in the Pac-12 network’s studios. Here are some of the big questions remaining after this latest major conference realignment:

These two schools will be operating on a much smaller financial scale than before. In the most recent proposal, the pair would take a reduced TV share (30%) that would amount to about $8 million apiece (SMU was reportedly expected to take no TV dollars for nine years). Those concessions (which freed up around $55 million for the current ACC members) ultimately helped swing the vote.

But even as the schools would eventually see an escalation in their shares — according to Cal, its 30% share will increase until the school’s 10th year, at which point the university will begin retaining 100% of its media revenue share — by comparison, the Pac-12 gave out approximately $37 million per school during the 2022 fiscal year. ESPN reported Cal and Stanford’s media revenue share number will jump to 70% in Year 8 and 75% in Year 9.

There are a couple of ways Cal and Stanford could try to start making up the difference. Conferences earn money for each team that makes a playoff game or major bowl game, and the pair of Pac-12 refugees would evenly share in any payouts — including a sure thing in 2024-25 when the expanded College Football Playoff starts and guarantees an ACC spot.

Another boost specifically for Cal, as outlined by Avinash Kunnath on Write for California, could come from the influx of revenue the UC Regents approved in December 2022 when UCLA bolted for the Big Ten. That amount was initially approved at $2 million to $10 million per year, but that was contingent on the Pac-12 media rights deal going through, which didn’t happen. That payout total, in turn, could possibly change for the better. As Kunnath writes, “UC Berkeley is still the jewel of the state of California, and there are plenty of heavy political hitters who will not want this university’s revenue streams be negatively impacted to this degree.”

There’s also the possibility that disgruntled schools like Clemson and Florida State bolt the ACC in search of a more lucrative deal and more competitive conference, triggering exorbitant exit fees that would be evenly paid out to the conference.

Will the math work out, and how much of a shortfall will the two schools face in the coming years? No one knows for sure.

The short answer: Yes. The two aforementioned ACC football powerhouses have lamented how the conference lags behind the Big Ten and SEC in terms of revenue. What particularly bugs them is that they’ve both had significantly more success in football than their ACC counterparts, yet everyone in the conference receives an equal revenue share. This issue was partly dealt with when the conference approved a “success incentive initiative,” providing more revenue for programs that succeed in revenue-generating sports.

It could ultimately fail to be enough for both programs, which could create issues for other ACC programs if Clemson and FSU leave. ESPN maintains the right to renegotiate an already criticized television rights deal if the conference dips below 15. As the Pac-12 has shown, if one school with enough clout leaves, others could be right behind it.

This is less for the sports like football and basketball and more for the sports that were relegated to Pac-12 Plus. As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Connor Letourneau noted, the closest current ACC school to these two Bay Area universities is Louisville, which is still a whopping 2,300 miles away. Then there’s at least another 500 miles to get to the Carolinas and beyond.

Cal projected Friday that 19 of its 30 sports will experience “either no or minimal change with regard to travel to the east.” Stanford expected 22 of its 36 sports wouldn’t be grossly affected. Neither school offered much more on the 25 programs that would be greatly impacted. The ACC sponsors competition in 28 sports; Cal said it will have teams in 24 of them.

According to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, one proposal presented to ACC presidents and chancellors provided that current ACC members would be scheduled to travel to the Bay Area only every other year. Additionally “Eastern members & two new Western members would meet in Dallas to conduct competition in Olympic sports” in one of the proposals, likely at SMU.

Because there were clearly multiple proposals on the table, though, it’s not entirely clear what will and won’t be adopted and if a non-Olympic sport like, say, baseball would be doing 6,000 miles of travel every other weekend.

The death of the Pac-12 Network could not come soon enough for some. USC fans were seen celebrating on social media the last year they’d have to watch their Trojans play football on that reviled feed. It was an ill-conceived experiment that nobody was able to access because of its poor distribution model. But that doesn’t mean it will evaporate into thin air after this season.

The network still exists, as does its studio, which has left San Francisco for San Ramon. Technically, Pac-12 members are still around, including the two that (for now) will stay behind once everyone else leaves. Oregon State and Washington State could, in theory, continue to use the network as they figure out what’s next for their respective futures. Why anyone would pay to keep the lights on for the Beavers and Cougars is anyone’s guess.

That’s just the beginning of the unknowns regarding the network. Who foots the bill on the studio’s lease when all the schools that were part of the conference at the network’s launch are gone? What about the contracts of people who work for the network? There are more unknowns than knowns at this point.

Washington State University President Kirk Schulz had a particularly optimistic suggestion in the wake of the Pac-12’s implosion: rebuild the conference. He presented this plan to the WSU Athletics Advisory Committee in August as a potential option for the school moving forward. However, that plan had Cal and Stanford in mind. With this latest move from the two Bay Area schools, that option sure seems to be off the table. 

Recently, Washington State met with Mountain West representatives, who pitched the conference as a potential landing spot for the Cougars. The discussions are still ongoing, but at least they have an out.

Oregon State, on the other hand, is in a bit more of a precarious position. At one point, the Pacific Northwest school had the same optimism of rebuilding the Pac-12. Now, not only is that plan gone, but the brutal realization of upcoming challenges has surely hit. The university is completing a $162 million renovation to its football stadium that was supposed to be paid off with revenue from the Pac-12. The Beavers find themselves stuck, and the dam’s already burst.

But while rebuilding might be out of the question, the two programs could still use the dregs of the Pac-12 as a bargaining chip. In the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, conferences are rewarded with “units” for every program that makes the Big Dance. Those units then get turned into multimillion-dollar payouts to those conferences and teams over a six-year cycle, and the next payout begins next budget year. As long as a team remains with a conference (or the conference merges with another conference and retains the “units”), it will receive those payouts.

This story was updated with additional details from Cal and Stanford.

Grant Marek contributed to this report.