I think if you ask anyone besides Jim Phillips, or the dead weight members of the ACC, the ACC is not considered #3. Yeah, the ACC schools might be getting 2 million dollars a year more than the B12 schools, but nobody seriously thinks the ACC is a better football conference than the B12. For a decade now, the ACC has been the biggest running joke in college sports. There is no positive coverage of the ACC. Disney won't put them on actual legacy broadcast channels. Their other college football brand "just means more." Disney pays the ACC half what the SEC gets paid. And then we get to the punditry. If you're in the ACC, you can't win. Oh, you're in the ACC and win all your games? It's because all the other teams in the conference suck. You're in the ACC and lose all your games? It's because you're another ACC team that sucks. That's only going to get worse now, too, because the CFP committee balked and put SMU into the CFP over Alabama, and SMU proceeded to pee down its leg and roll right over. Perception, of course, becomes reality. The losses pile up. And, the best part is that the stigma against the ACC is already bleeding over into basketball, the only thing the ACC had going for it at all. Now, ACC basketball sucks too. To the extent that being #3 even matters, it's all temporary, at best. The death clock for the ACC is sitting at about 10 minute to midnight because when the current GOR expires, FSU, Clemson, Miami, VT, and UNC are definitely not going to sign another GOR, because why would they? Those brands hold the power over the ACC now, not the other way around. Things have changed. Even if you ignore the financials, SMU is now in the ACC, and who wants to rub stink all over their brand by being in a conference with SMU? Does anyone think that FSU, Clemson, and UNC are going to grant their media rights to the idiot that engineered SMU to the ACC, or flying the volleyball team from the upstate South Carolina to Palo Alto for a conference game? No, they won't, and if they won't, then ACC "membership" basically becomes meaningless, and that will be that. ** Edited by Baltimore_Hokie at 1/14/2025, 3:16:26 PM