Report: ACC Considered Adding 5-7 Pac-12 Teams Before Big Ten, Big 12 Expansion

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The ACC was reportedly considering adding five-to-seven schools from the Pac-12 before the Big Ten and Big 12 swooped in and put the Pac-12 on life support.

Ross Dellinger of Yahoo Sports reported ACC officials “were scheduled to meet” Friday night to further discuss the conference’s expansion plans after the Big Ten added Oregon and Washington and the Big 12 accepted Arizona State, Arizona and Utah as new members.

The ACC has faced mounting pressure from its member schools—particularly Florida State—to increase revenue. The conference signed a 20-year media rights deal with ESPN in 2016 that has become a source of contention within the league.

The SEC and Big Ten already rake in more money on their media deals, and that’s before their new contracts kick in—deals that will likely create a chasm between the haves and have nots across the college sports landscape. Florida State president Richard McCullough said the school will consider leaving the ACC without a “radical change” to the conference’s revenue distribution.

“Our goal would be to continue to stay in the ACC, but staying in the ACC under the current situation is hard for us to figure out how we remain competitive unless there were a major change in the revenue distribution within the conference,” McCullough said. “That has not happened. Those discussions are ongoing at all times.

“FSU helps to drive value and will drive value for any partner, but we have spent a year trying to understand how we might fix the issue. There are no easy fixes to this challenge, but a group of us have spent literally a year. We’ve explored every possible option that you can imagine. The issue at hand is what can we do to allow ourselves to be competitive in football and get what I think is the revenue we deserve?

“This continues to be a very difficult issue. There’s a lot going on in the world of conference realignment. My current assessment of the situation after very deep analysis is I believe FSU will have to at some point consider very seriously leaving the ACC unless there were a radical change to the revenue distribution.”

Florida State, Miami and Clemson would be widely considered the ACC’s three strongest schools in terms of revenue generation from the football side of things, which carries the lion’s share of the weight in television negotiations.

Florida State would have a somewhat natural home in the SEC, which would pair the Seminoles with rival Florida as part of the growing superconference. Miami and Clemson would also likely be welcomed to a growing SEC with open arms should the ACC start to fall apart similar to the Pac-12.

Cal, Washington State, Oregon State and Stanford are the only four remaining members of the Pac-12.

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