The ACC voted Friday morning to formally add California, Stanford and SMU as members of the league starting in 2024, creating an 18-team bi-coastal conference with 17 full-time football-playing members.
SMU will join the conference on July 1, 2024, with Cal and Stanford coming on a month later on Aug. 2. It’s the first time the league’s membership has extended beyond the Eastern Time Zone.
“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,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said in a news release.
The move comes in response to the SEC adding Texas and Oklahoma, the Big Ten adding USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington in recent years and the Big 12 picking apart what was left of the Pac-12 by taking Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State.
Twelve of the ACC’s 15 schools needed to approve the expansion vote in order for it to pass, with partial member Notre Dame getting a full vote. Last week, there were reports that a straw poll only showed 11 schools in favor, with Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina and NC State opposing. NC State flipped its vote, per multiple reports, tipping the balance.
The decision came after weeks of negotiations, with all three schools making considerable financial concessions to become full members. Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported Cal and Stanford will receive only a 30 percent share of TV money initially, with SMU forgoing its entire TV share for its first nine years in the conference.
ESPN reported the money being withheld will create an annual pot of revenue in the $50 million to $60 million range. Some of that will go directly to the existing 14 schools and Notre Dame and some will be added to the pool of success initiatives rewarding winning programs in the revenue sports.
Jim Phillips' thoughts
Editor's note: ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips spoke with the league's media at 1:30 p.m. ET on Friday afternoon, a number of hours after the news went public. Here's a summary of points from his press conference from David Cunningham:
The ACC has travel sorted out.
The money is always a question, but since expansion has now set up conferences that span the entire U.S., the health of student-athletes has become a larger topic. Phillips hit on that Friday afternoon, saying there was "great pause" about the student-athlete experience and what it looks like.
"In the end, there were countless hours of discussions ... about how can we and how should we schedule into the future," Phillips said.
He mentioned 14 of the league's 28 sports won't be affected by the move, referencing sports like track & field, cross country and golf that play in invitationals or jamborees with a number of schools at a central location.
As far as football travel is concerned, the 14 current ACC institutions will travel to California once every two years. Coming back the other way, Cal and Stanford will make 3-4 trips per year.
With men's and women's basketball, the East Coast universities will make two trips every four years. In those instances, it would be a Thursday-Sunday or Saturday-Monday swing to the Bay Area with matchups against both Cal and Stanford. The Bears and Cardinal are expected to make 3-4 journeys east. The schedule would be set up for those two schools to play two games against teams in close proximity — for example, Duke and North Carolina, Virginia and Virginia Tech or Miami and Florida State — in one swing.
For Olympic sports, it would potentially be one trek per season out west while Cal and Stanford would make 2-4. Baseball and softball are in their own boat, however.
"For the sport of baseball and softball, we would not do it over a week; we would do a weekend series and get those teams home," Phillips said. "Not spending an entire week on the West Coast or vice versa."
The vote wasn't unanimous.
North Carolina and Florida State both released statements announcing they voted against expansion. Clemson was the other outlier. Phillips wasn't worried, though.
"I can tell you that when we left that call today, everyone was in a really good place," Phillips said. "... It has something for everyone. May not have had everything for everyone, but whether you voted for or not, you're going to benefit from this new arrangement and these three world-class schools joining the ACC."
The Commissioner referenced the leagues' expansion in the early 2000s when it invited Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College. The vote wasn't unanimous then, he said, similar to the current times.
"According to those that were around that time, and I talked to Commissioner [John] Swofford and others, it was the same kind of feeling that there was an awful lot of good about these three particular schools, but for whatever reason, not everyone believed that to be true," he said. "But when you have a threshold like 80 percent, I think you can understand a great majority of the schools were in favor and are in favor, and even those that dissented voted for other things like the initiative plan that will provide some revenue in a disproportionate way and provide some rewards for those having success and investing at the athletic level."
He harped on the success initiative a number of times, a plan that was announced in May. Though a formula hasn't been publicized, it's expected to reward schools that thrive in football and men's basketball. Phillips' message: "Let that play out. Let's see what that looks like. Let's see how much revenue is generated."
There's been no conversation yet about the location of the ACC men's and women's basketball tournaments.
With the expansion to Texas and California, might the conference move its tournaments to a more neutral location? As ESPN's Pete Thamel reported earlier on Friday, the ACC is interested in using Dallas a hub.
However, Phillips insisted that the league has not made a decision on the basketball tournaments, from their location to how they'll be formatted in 2025 with 18 teams. He's interested to hear the opinions of the head coaches and athletic directors in that regard.
"I think there's a lot of options about where you can place the basketball tournament with what we've done today," Phillips said. "And we're going to be aggressive. But in the end, I think you have to always remember where your home bases were, where you've had an awful lot of success. And that has been in the state of North Carolina, it's been Greensboro and Charlotte."