David Hale on ACC NIL

By: bar1990
ATLIEN
on July 20, 2026, 5:02 PM | 2 comments

Interesting thread (started here, continues in a quote tweet here) on ACC teams' Collective/Rev Share payments.

My thoughts:

  1. It's nice to get confirmation that VT is spending like they said they would

  2. There's so little publicly available data out there, but the connected people have a really good idea. it's really interesting to see that Hale estimates the ACC 'median' football pay is ~$15m/$16m.

  3. Jake Dicker is a really good coach and he should get the hell out of Wake.

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bar1990's picture bar1990
ATLIEN
| 16 hours 17 min #

Also, sorta related, a quick excerpt from Hale's substack piece on ACC media days:

We got some one-on-one time with new Syracuse AD Bryan Blair and new Virginia Tech AD Brian White in Charlotte. They both echoed a story I've heard at Georgia Tech, Louisville, Virginia and others: We need to modernize and improve quickly. There's no time for a slow burn because everyone is keenly aware that we're probably 2-3 years (at most) away from a potentially massive shakeup of college football, where the haves start separating from the have-nots, and you don't want to be on the wrong side of that line when the music stops.

James Franklin is obviously the key cog in Virginia Tech's revival, and he wouldn't be there without the massive new investment in football from the school. But as Franklin told me this spring — and reiterated in Charlotte — that $229 million investment promised last year was benchmarked on what it would take to win the ACC, and he's not interested in stopping there. He came to win a natty, and that's going to cost even more.

Get used to JMFF doing what JMFF does best

Edit: That was intended to be a little... snarky?

Virginia Tech fans are going to get tired of him complaining and pushing. It won't be this year. It won't be next year but if he makes it five or 10 years here, people are going to interpret his requests as excuses.

Egbert's picture Egbert
BEER
| 25 min 45 sec # ^

I think that would depend on if he can deliver.

This is going to be great for the ACC.