The ACC welcomes Cal, SMU and Stanford to the league in 2024!Read more: https://t.co/9vhMMdDCq1 pic.twitter.com/N2ugGLAert— The ACC (@theACC) September 1, 2023
The additions of Cal, SMU and Stanford enhance and strengthen the ACC academically, athletically and financially as well as create a true national conference that spans coast to coast. The incoming universities enrich the league's competitiveness in all sports and further demonstrate the ACC's commitment to broad-based programs for both women and men. More than 2,200 student-athletes from Cal, SMU and Stanford will join the nearly 10,000 current ACC student-athletes competing at the highest level of intercollegiate athletics.
"This is a significant day for the ACC as we welcome Cal, SMU and Stanford to this incredible conference," said University of Virginia President James E. Ryan, chair of the ACC Board of Directors. "This expansion will enhance and strengthen the league now and in the future. We greatly appreciate the tireless efforts of Commissioner Jim Phillips throughout this entire process, especially his focus on minimizing travel burdens for student-athletes, and we are excited about the ACC's collective future."
"We are thrilled to welcome three world-class institutions to the ACC, and we look forward to having them compete as part of our amazing league," said ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, Ph.D. "Throughout the evaluation process, the ACC Board of Directors, led by President Ryan, was deliberate in prioritizing the best possible athletic and academic experience for our student-athletes and in ensuring that the three universities would strengthen the league in all possible ways. Cal, SMU and Stanford will be terrific members of the ACC and we are proud to welcome their student-athletes, coaches, staff and entire campus community, alumni and fans."
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Cal, SMU and Stanford will begin competing in the ACC across their respective sponsored sports beginning in the 2024-2025 academic year. The ACC leads all Autonomy 5 conferences with 15 women's sports offerings and no conference offers more than the league's 28 total sponsored sports.
I know we already have the other thread, but this is the official announcement with more details. Personally, I absolutely hate it, its a terrible decision for each and every student athlete at Cal and Stanford, and I am truly sorry that they're now going to have to deal with this. I would say money talks, but apparently the ACC isn't really getting any more money out of this, the new schools are just surrendering their financial cut of the pie back to the other members to temporarily give us all a few million more per year before we go back to where we are in the 2030s.
Its stupid, its dumb, its pointless, and it makes us weaker in the biggest moneymaking sport in college athletics. So, its the perfect move for the ACC to have made.
Comments
But, can SMU's horse run on a treadmill? I think not.
Personally I think the tree or a bear running on a treadmill would be much more entertaining.
Let's just go ahead and revive this now.
I remember is the other way around... https://www.espn.com/college-football/game/_/gameId/310030259
Luckily for me my memory gets pretty hazy right around the end of my tailgate for this game.
I have two memories from that game
#1 when Tyrod struck a pose as he scrambled into the end zone already down a million points
#2 The ridiculous formation shift play that Stanford ran up by a bazillion point just to mess with us. Why one of our D linemen didn't take the encroachment penalty to puck Luck on his ass is still beyond me.
My only memory is right before the half when Tyrod jumped out of a sack on the sideline, rifled a ball to Jarrett Boykin in the back of the endzone, only for it to be "intercepted" by David Wilson for the touchdown.
Also, HOLY FUCK was that Stanford offense had a lot of talent.
WR: Doug Baldwin
TE: Coby Fleener
TE: Zach Ertz
QB: Andrew Luck
#1 didn't even happen that game... i'm not even sure which game that was. Maybe the '08 Orange Bowl.
I'm not going to say that a pose didn't happen in the Stanford game but the pose I remember happened in the acccg against fsu (same year)
Ahhh those were some fun times round these parts
I doubt it but at least there is a horse in the conference now
How about all the additional greenhouse gases produced by the extended traveling, OMG. /S
so our pod is going to be fixed right?
I think it'll look something like this.
ACC trophy is now a golden trans am firebird.
GT and SMU play for the Snowman trophy and only Coors beer is sold in the nuGeorgiaDome for the game.
personally I would love it if Uva and Clemson were switched. Better football in the bottom and uva AND ND get stuck with the tobacco road circle jerk.
Given the alt-text, Miami, Louisville, and SMU need to be in the Smokey division.
obligatory:
On the other hand, if you're going to blow it up, blow it up REAL GOOD.
I mean that's where i'm at, if they're gonna do this and throw the ol' kabob to everyone they might as well do it in grandeur style. So I say we add Hawaii, North Dakota State, UNLV and the University of Saskatchewan too. We'll be the first conference to bring a Canadian school into the football fold.
Well, if you're not taking into account football or distance, Stanford and Cal aren't bad universities to be associated with.
Yes, the football revenues are going to struggle to keep up with the SEC and the B10. But a big picture "my university hangs out with your university" perspective, the ACC isn't a terrible club to be in.
Yeah, I don't disagree with that viewpoint and I'm kinda excited about adding Stanford other than the geographical aspect. However, the ACC has bumbled this whole expansion thing and drug their feet too long.
Same. Having been to every city the ACC occupies sans Syracuse, I'm much, much more likely to a make a trip to Dallas or San Fran than many (maybe most) of the eastern destinations. I think the ACC left geography behind some time ago.
And this is how you end up with the ACC adding ECU, Liberty, ODU, and possibly JMU and making a very special VT pod just for us
Seems to me that they went the opposite direction of that.
They chose prestige over geography. This is national branding, not regional.
I'm a big supporter of VT football, mostly for what it can do for VT, not the other way around. I don't think it really hurts VT football very much (the ACC is what it is with respect to football), but it does get VT more national exposure.
It will be interesting to see how the pods apply to the new conference.
Football is and will be a mess. Basketball you can play every school once and 1 rival twice (18 games). The other sports could be divided into 3 6-team pods:
West- Cal, Stanford, SMU, ND, Louisville, Pitt
South/East- BC, Syracuse, Clemson, GT, FSU, UM
Mid Atlantic- VT, UVA, 4 NC schools
You'd play your 5 pod opponents and 2-3 from the others depending on the sport.
Hopefully the schedules would align for the long road trips and you'd only have to go to CA once per year (ex: host Cal, play at Stanford) and you could have baseball and softball play the same team the same weekend, they could share a plane to save $$.