Brown: Louisville picked wrong side in ACC expansion. The Cardinals should have voted no

Louisville aligned with the wrong set of friends in the Atlantic Coast Conference last Friday when it sided with the likes of Virginia, Duke, Notre Dame and others to approve invitations to Stanford, California and SMU as the league’s newest members.

The decision to take a short-term monetary gain ensured the long-term consequences for the ACC will end in eventually becoming a second-tier league, positioned so far behind the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference that it’s an afterthought.

U of L never expected to be in this position again after joining the league in 2014. The ACC was supposed to be the smart ones. In a backhanded way, U of L is so used to having to deal with conference affiliation politics that it is uniquely prepared to handle the future however it unfolds, both in the ACC and in college athletics.

And with a "sneaky suspicion" that more moves will happen in the next five years, U of L athletic director Josh Heird seemed resigned to expect change sooner than later.

“We can’t worry about what everybody else is doing, we have to be aware of what's going on around us,” Heird said. “But if we focus on doing our very best here in Louisville, and at the University of Louisville, we’ll be in a good position.”

In the smug, country club mentality that consumes the ACC membership, they don’t look at U of L as a peer school. It’s not a state flagship. It’s not a private school. It doesn’t have a long list of boosters with “old money.”

That’s why U of L should have gone against the majority.

It was worth the wait to see how much the league could potentially benefit from the College Football Playoff expansion and if the bubble finally bursts on exorbitant broadcast rights deals and comes back to the mean.

What gets lost in the revenue envy of seeing how much the Big Ten and SEC will distribute in the future is that the ACC distributed a record amount of revenue this year.

SMU reportedly deferred its cut from the ACC’s broadcast revenue distribution for nine years. The shameless way the Mustangs went about offering to essentially buy their way into the league should have been grounds by itself for denying entry.

Who wants to be associated with a group that believes throwing money around solves every problem? The ACC apparently, because that's what they do in country clubs. They gladly accepted SMU as they did Cal and Stanford for agreeing to only receive a partial cut until further down the road.

The distribution plan deferrals freed up enough cash to reportedly turned a no vote that was holding up expansion into a yes from N.C. State and create about an extra $55 million pot for current league members to divide up.

Heird acknowledged that still won’t add up to the SEC and Big Ten splits when he spoke Monday with The Courier Journal. He added that discussions about the league’s success initiative to determine how the additional revenue will be distributed were still ongoing.

“We’re not going to achieve those same numbers,” Heird said. “They are creating more revenue with their contracts, but I do think it provides an opportunity for those teams that are seeing success in football and men’s basketball to get closer to that number in those other conferences.”

The league’s grant of rights agreement is solid enough that it doesn’t make sense for a school to challenge to break it for the next six or so years, despite all the public posturing from Florida State last month.

As spoiled as Clemson, North Carolina and the Seminoles in particular looked in touting their brands and what they deserve to get paid from ACC revenue distribution, they all made the right move in voting no.

Now the league is left with a travel burden it doesn’t want while addressing scheduling challenges it doesn’t need, to add football and men’s basketball brands that currently, and maybe even historically, don’t add a whole lot of value.

Remember when the ACC used to be a basketball conference? It’s going to be harder to with the addition of this albatross that will precipitate the free fall.

Since the NCAA began using the NET rankings in place of the RPI the 2019-20 season, only Stanford has had a team finish in the top 50 of NET.

That was the first year, when the Cardinal ranked No. 33. They’ve averaged a rank of No. 86 the remaining three seasons.

U of L fans lived through the dread of its 4-28 record and No. 314 ranking in the NET last season. But the Cards weren't even the lowest power conference school — incoming ACC member Cal finished No. 315.

And for what? A few extra million dollars and to all but guarantee the eventual exits of FSU, Clemson and UNC.

We’ll find out fast if it was ultimately worth it. But in voting to approve expansion, U of L is tethered to its decision and the other 11 schools that voted for it, for better or worse.

Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on Twitter at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his column.

Brown: Jeff Brohm shows why he was right person to lead Louisville football in come-from-behind win

Brown: ACC can show leadership amid latest round of conference realignment — by doing nothing

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Conference realignment: Louisville on wrong side of ACC expansion vote