Its basketball TV rights were still among the most valuable in college athletics. Twenty years ago, the ACC was arguably the most powerful of the major conferences. How much longer can it hold? And another question: How did the ACC reach this point, anyway? Yet even if the grant of rights does hold, for now, it still feels like a temporary fix for a long-term problem.Īnother metaphor befitting the ACC these days: The conference is playing the role of a weakening dam, foreboding cracks forming all over the place, doing its best to halt the flow of an ever-strengthening current. The grant of rights dictates that if a school departs, the value of its media rights remains with the ACC for the duration of its television contract. The ACC in 2013 adopted a grant of rights for that very purpose, when Maryland was in the process of leaving the conference. It all makes for something of a bleak picture for the ACC, which now has to hope its grant of rights holds up, and is enough of a deterrent to keep some of its more coveted schools (Clemson, Florida State, Miami and, yes, even ACC standard-bearer North Carolina) from defecting. The ACC, meanwhile, is locked into its contract with ESPN through 2036. The gulf between the two richest conferences and everyone else is only going to grow, too, given that both the Big Ten and SEC will soon have new TV deals. The ACC during the 2020-21 fiscal year finished about $100 million behind the Big Ten, and more than $250 million behind the SEC. That kind of financial gap was manageable and, at the time, the ACC had reason to believe it was another TV rights deal away from closing it or even surpassing its rivals to become the wealthiest league.Īnd now? The figures tell a much different story.
The 2001-02 fiscal year ended with the ACC having made $98.1 million - about $6.5 million fewer than the Big Ten and $20 million fewer than the SEC. Twenty years ago, the ACC was not the richest conference in college athletics, but it was close. Not in a college sports world in which the Big Ten and SEC have made even more money, and at an even more obscene rate of increase. The past 10 years, between 20, ACC revenue increased from $167.2 million to almost $580 million, a record for the league.įew businesses anywhere, in any field, can match the ACC’s financial growth over the past 10 or 20 years and, yet.
Over the past 20 years, the conference has increased its revenue by about 500%. That the ACC finds itself here, in a brewing existential crisis, tells one all they need to know about the state of college athletics in 2022. Or, perhaps equally worse, risk the specter of taking less desirable trains to less desirable destinations (though, more literally, the likes of Starkville, Mississippi, and Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Piscataway, New Jersey, aren’t exactly resort towns). There’s the Power Two - the Big Ten and SEC - and schools can either find a way on the train or risk the specter of being left at the station. And that truth is this: In major college athletics, there is no longer any such thing as the Power Five. The revelation that USC and UCLA intend to depart the Pac-12 for the Big Ten has reinforced a truth that is not new, necessarily, but one that is becoming more difficult to ignore. The ACC isn’t quite there, not yet anyway, but the vibes are not good. Pick a related metaphor and they all fit the perception that suddenly surrounds the ACC: A sinking ship the Hindenburg engulfed in a fireball the grim reaper knocking on the door, toting a scythe. In an instant late last week, the ACC went from a period of relative stability - yet one not without significant questions about its long-term future - to prognostications of doom and visions of worst-case scenarios.
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