There was no pressing reason to add those parties as members when they did, and every reason not to, but Wake Forest and Boston College were panicking, and spread that panic, ending up with the result we got, which did nothing but add 3 dog turds (in terms of football brand and viewership) to the conference, which did less than nothing to help solve the problem facing the conference. Everyone would have been better served by not freaking out and letting the FSU/Clemson situation play out. Stanford and Cal weren't going anywhere; the Big 10 wasn't interested, and they both characteristically turned their nose up at the Big 12. SMU DEFINITELY wasn't going anywhere, because they had been begging and pleading with anyone to please, please just let them into their conference since the 1990's, those pleas falling on deaf ears because a lot of much more intelligent and business savvy people understood before that the only party that's ultimately going to see any extra value if you add SMU to your conference is SMU. The CalFord/SMU addition will go down in history as an all time pea brain move that went through as a panic response by the dead weight ACC schools to the giant FSU/Clemson lawsuit nothingburger. Disney/ESPN can say whatever they want publicly, but anyone that has ever crossed a giant like that understands that they are never going to forgive the ACC for pulling that **** (by "that ****," I mean going behind Disney's back to add CalFord/SMU without their consultation and demanding more money via a contractual obligation in the ACC's media rights deal that was clearly included to provide for situations where the ACC poached teams with actual value at Disney's direction.) I don't even need to get into the absolutely asinine media rights deals the ACC has made with Disney, or that they were about 10-11 years too late the conference network party. You can do your own research there if you don't already know. All that said, there's plenty the ACC could do to IMPROVE its brand, but it doesn't - it does the opposite. The people that run the ACC know what drives money/interest/engagement. So, why were esoteric tie breaker rules allowed to stay in place, ending up with DUKE FOOTBALL getting into the ACCCG instead of Miami? A non-idiot move would have been to just say in the event of a tie, the two highest CFP ranked programs are in the game. That's what everyone else does. Not the ACC - the ACC is worried about making sure the dead weight feels included more than they are bolstering the actual bread winners. How do you fix all this now? The damage is already done. There's only 2-3 years on the clock to have a miraculous turnaround before programs get the greenlight to leave, either for the P2 or to do their own thing. I really don't think there's anything that can be done to save the ACC. The milk is spoiled. The only programs that are going to keep drinking it are the ones that have to. ** Edited by Baltimore_Hokie at 5/20/2026, 11:02:13 AM