At ACC spring meetings, there will be the usual work – and a feeling of dysfunction
When members of the ACC last convened for their annual spring meetings, they endured some early dysfunction and ended with everyone putting on a happy face. They were unified. Committed to each other, and to the conference. It’d been a strange start to the week – what with the revelation that some schools were exploring a potential exit – but that was in the past.
Or so the messaging went when those meetings ended last May.
“What I’ve been told is that we’re all in this thing together,” Jim Phillips, the ACC Commissioner, said then. Not only were ACC schools “in this thing together,” but they were in it together “emphatically,” Phillips said. “We believe in the ACC. We believe where we’re going.
“And we want to continue to work together.”
Well. So much for that.
ACC administrators, coaches and other school and conference officials will gather again this week for the latest iteration of the league’s spring meetings. The early-to-mid May date is the same as always. The venue, at the oceanside Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, outside of Jacksonville, Florida, is the same as always. As for the vibe?
It’s not exactly the same as always. This year, the ACC’s spring meetings might feel something like a dysfunctional family reunion. Two schools, Florida State and Clemson, are trying to sue themselves out of the conference. Representatives from three others – Cal, Stanford and SMU – are preparing for their schools’ entry into the league.
Other league members might still just be happy to be there, with the ACC intact (for now). While others might be planning their own exits and lawsuits, behind the scenes.
And, oh yes: There’s actually a lot of work to be done at these meetings, too, and some weighty discussions to be had about everything from the future of scheduling to television to figuring out how, exactly, everything is going to work now that the conference will have a presence in Texas and California. Remember when spring meetings were pretty boring, predictable affairs?
These likely won’t be. Here are the storylines to follow in the coming days:
1. Well, this is awkward
No one can fault Phillips for trying. And conference membership a year ago might have even provided good reason for him to say what he said a year ago, that “we’re all in this thing together” and that “we believe in the ACC” and that “we want to continue to work together.”
Actions, though, suggest otherwise. In the year since Phillips and ACC members attempted to present a united front, both Florida State and Clemson have sued the conference over its Grant of Rights. The ACC has sued both schools, in return (and in a technical sense sued FSU first, the day before FSU filed its own lawsuit last December).
The ACC is facing another lawsuit in Florida, that one brought by that state’s attorney general, Ashley Moody, who is fighting to make the conference’s contract with ESPN a public record. So that’s five lawsuits, not to mention the prolonged debate and decision over expansion last August – which led to the controversial decision to add Cal, Stanford and SMU.
And now everyone’s going to get together at the Amelia Island Ritz. The winner in all this, this week? Probably those working the lobby bar inside the resort hotel, where the post-meeting gathering sessions are sure to be juicy, gossip-filled and cocktail-infused.
As for the meetings themselves? There’s undoubtedly going to be a sense of the awkward and weird. If you’re from a school highly dependent on the ACC’s survival, what’s it going to be like hanging out for three days with folks from Clemson or FSU? If you’re from a school that hasn’t sued, but who’d have options, how do you give the appearance of neutrality?
And what about Phillips in all this? His conference is under siege, his legal team is going to war in court in a fight for ACC survival – and oh, there’s Michael Alford, the Florida State athletics director, right on time for an afternoon joint session meeting with ADs and faculty athletic reps.
Hello, Jim.
Yes, good to see you, Mike.
How’s the golf game these days?
Why, just dandy — loving my new putter. See you in there in a few.
(Note: It’s unclear whether Phillips or Alford plays golf, but what else can they talk about to avoid talking about the elephant in the room?)
Will they just act like everything is normal? Do they have any other choice?
The expectation of any kind of dramatic fireworks is probably misplaced. It’s not like Phillips and Alford are going to square off in The Octagon and settle things once and for all (we don’t think, at least). Still, the whole thing is just going to be strange. This is hardly the collegial, small-fraternity-like ACC of old.
2. And welcome to the ACC!
And while that strangeness is going on, then here comes the newcomers. Spring meetings will represent something of an unofficial welcome-to-the-ACC moment for officials and coaches from Cal, Stanford and SMU, all of whom will be thrilled to varying degrees just to be there.
Cal and Stanford, after all, had nowhere else to go amid the implosion of the Pac-12. And SMU was so desperate to achieve power-conference status that it’s foregoing ACC television revenue for years to come just to be a part of the league. (Texas oil money affords such financial freedom.)
These meetings would be odd enough if they only included a pair of schools trying to sue their way out of the conference. But they also include three schools on the opposite end of the spectrum, who are just arriving and hoping the conference finds its way through the turmoil.
Well, at least the newcomers are accustomed to instability, at least. The ACC will be SMU’s fourth league since the Southwest Conference fell apart in the mid-1990s. Cal and Stanford, meanwhile, were left hanging after the Big Ten pillaged the Pac-12. The ACC went from rejecting the thought of expansion early last August to embracing it.
It does not make sense for a school from Texas and two others from California to be a part of the ACC, but the arrival of this trio underscores the reality that nothing about major college sports makes sense in 2024. And besides, it makes for some amusing small-talk potential among the three incoming members and the two schools that are trying so desperately to leave.
The old cliche is true: one school’s cast-off conference is another’s savior. Or something like that.
3. Money, money, money
What are conference spring meetings these days if not a lot of different conversations that are ultimately really about the same thing? Even when the talks are not directly about money, they’re often actually about ... money.
Maximizing television dollars – through ratings and attractive match-ups in football and men’s and women’s basketball – will again take up some significant bandwidth this week. There’s only so much the ACC can do given the length and terms of its contract with ESPN, but the conference’s mission continues to make itself as attractive as possible in terms of TV “inventory.”
And speaking of TV: what about that ESPN contract, anyway?
For years, it has been widely reported to end in 2036, but FSU has alleged that it actually expires in 2027, and that ESPN needs to exercise an option to extend it. Add that to the list of things that Phillips (along with school athletics directors) probably won’t want to address this week. But it should be cleared up: Can the ACC guarantee its ESPN deal beyond 2027?
Is there an opportunity to rework it? Is there concern, given the overall instability throughout the television and cable industry these days, that ESPN might not extend it, if indeed the deal needs extension?
All valid questions.
In addition to TV revenue, expect some continued grumbling among school administrators and coaches about the overall state of name, image and likeness deals, which have clearly morphed into an unregulated pay-for-play kind of system. A system, by the way, funded by boosters and fans and not the schools themselves. It’s not sustainable, and it seems only a matter of time before schools and conferences will be forced into a revenue-sharing model with athletes.
How that looks remains to be seen but the inevitability of it is part of why schools like FSU and Clemson are feeling a special kind of financial pressure. It’s going to cost more and more to retain a seat at the so-called “big boy” table of college football. That’s especially true once schools are directly paying players (instead of relying on fans to do that work for them).
A valid question, too, is whether some schools might decide this new world isn’t for them. Though, once you’re committed to going round and round the hamster wheel of big-time college athletics, it has proven impossible to exit.
4. Basketball matters
What’s this? Some actual discussion about sports?
There’ll be some of that over the next three days at the Ritz, too. In years past, a lot of the most important sports-centric conversations have centered on football, and rightfully so. For instance there was, in 2022, the Great Divisions debate about whether the ACC should ditch the Atlantic and Coastal divisions.
Which the league did, ultimately. While Coastal Chaos will be missed, the ACC clearly made the right move there. Now that the conference has settled on a division-less model in football, its scheduling model and arrangement in men’s basketball deserves some attention.
Yet again, the conference took a national beating this past season on the perception front, with some national pundits going so far to suggest that the Mountain West was a superior basketball conference to the ACC. Some of the takes were absurd and mind-numbing, but they existed, nonetheless, and took hold in a social media-driven sports culture not often built on reality.
The ACC again had a Final Four team, in N.C. State. It again out-performed its perceived reputation in March, with four Sweet 16 teams. But how does the conference fight the narrative that it’s a shell of what it was?
Expect coaches and athletics directors to discuss cutting back on the 20-game conference schedule, for one. Maybe the ACC goes back to an 18-game model, with an emphasis on protecting and building geographic rivalries. The league, too, needs to figure out a better way to start the season. The Big 12 has figured out that feasting on inferior competition throughout much of November and December is a good way to build some positive publicity.
Does the ACC follow that conference’s lead? It’d be bad for fans and anyone who likes watching compelling games, if those kinds of games were to decrease, but avoiding narrative-setting defeats would be good for the league’s image and standing in the computer rankings (and a conversation about those metrics is needed, too).
Another order of business: What’s the league’s position on the possible expansion of the NCAA Tournament? Greg Sankey, the SEC Commissioner, seems intent on expanding it – just as he’s intent on imposing his will on a lot of areas throughout the college sports industry. Does the ACC, if it disagrees with Sankey, stand up to him? Do coaches just go along with the thought of tournament expansion, which does not seem particularly popular among fans?
Any basketball conversations will be particularly weighty this week, too, now that Bubba Cunningham, the athletics director at North Carolina, begins his tenure as chair of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. It’s not like Cunningham has anything else on his plate, what with the turmoil surrounding the ACC and college sports at large.
Overall, these spring meetings are likely to be unlike any other in ACC history. There’s plenty of work to be done, as usual, to go along with the intrigue of those coming, and those wishing they were going.
