CLEMSON -- ACC presidents have voted to add Stanford, California and SMU to the conference, Tigerillustrated.com has learned.
After weeks of back and forth, the ACC went forward with expansion to 18 schools early this morning in a vote of presidents.
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In mid-August, Clemson played an integral role in forming an initial blockade to the expansion idea. Four "no" votes are needed to block expansion, and at the time the dissenters were Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and N.C. State.
As Tigerillustrated.com has chronicled in recent days, the recent ebbs and flows in the expansion debate have centered on North Carolina and N.C. State.
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North Carolina politics emerged this week as a pivot point as both UNC and N.C. State are under the umbrella of the University of North Carolina System's Board of Governors.
The Tar Heels and Wolfpack of course both have their own chancellors who have their own positions. But above them are the Board of Governors and the state legislature, and the ACC's flip-flop-flipping on expansion can largely be tied to the indecision amongst the aforementioned leadership above Chapel Hill and Raleigh.
The ACC needed 12 of its 15 members to vote yes to expand. Initial indications this morning were that N.C. State flipped and voted in favor of expansion.
Just last night, UNC's Board of Trustees took the rare and revealing step of releasing a statement in opposition to expansion.
Here was the statement attributed to David L. Boliek Jr., chairman of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, and vice chair John P. Preyer:
“The strong majority of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees opposes the proposed expansion of the Atlantic Coast Conference to include Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Southern Methodist University. Although we respect the academic excellence and the athletic programs of those institutions, the travel distances for routine in-conference competitive play are too great for this arrangement to make sense for our student athletes, coaches, alumni and fans. Furthermore, the economics of this newly imagined transcontinental conference do not sufficiently address the income disparity ACC members face. Without ironclad assurances that the proposed expansion serves the interest of UNC-Chapel Hill, we believe it should be voted down.”
Expansion was thought to be dead last month after the initial four-school opposition. But significant financial concessions by the three proposed additions revived discussion and debate.
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SMU agreed to basically come for free, forgoing its annual television payouts for seven years. Stanford and Cal offered to take just 30 percent initially.
Those discounts would create a pool of about $60 million for the ACC's 15 schools to divide, and extra revenues are in high demand as ACC schools try to keep from falling hopelessly behind the SEC and Big Ten in annual TV/media payouts.
A significant portion of the money would be put into a pool for success initiatives as a reward for high-performing programs (largely in football).
At Clemson it is estimated that expansion would immediately bring somewhere between $5-8 million extra next year with the three new schools expected to begin competition in the 2024-25 season in all sports. Clemson's total revenue from the ACC this year is expected to be in the $40 million range.
Beyond the financial increases that would come with bringing about three heavily-discounted members, a significant factor for the pro-expansion side was protecting the conference if some members defect.
Florida State has been vocal about its desire to explore other conference options. Clemson has been less public with its criticisms, but the school has spent years and large sums of money exploring possible ways to extricate itself from the Grant of Rights agreement (signed in 2016) that stretches to 2036.
North Carolina has also been aggressive behind the scenes in examining the Grant of Rights and aligning the Tar Heels with Clemson and Florida State.
"The safety-in-numbers approach is being openly talked about in the conference," a source told us earlier this week.
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Though Florida State's combative public approach made some speculatively wonder whether Clemson might've changed its vote to a yes over the last week, our contacts have maintained all along that president Jim Clements was consistent with the school's no vote.
In fact, at one point last weekend it appeared Clemson was the lone dissenter with 14 schools (including FSU) privately voicing sentiment for expansion.
But as of Thursday evening, all indications pointed to Clemson, Florida State and UNC in the no category with N.C. State the wild card.
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