Let's start with Notre Dame. Fact 1: ND has a contract with the ACC that says it must join the ACC in football if it joins a league. Fact 2: Virtually no one expects ND to join the ACC. How can that be?
The expectation is ND will be patient here. Jack Swarbrick is in no rush to upend a core tenet of ND's tradition because a couple pieces moved on the chess board. Moreover, the biggest looming ? for the Irish remains unanswered: The playoff. (more on that in a bit)
ND's contract with the ACC looks essentially like everyone else in the league: An exit fee (3x annual revenue) and a GoR - but only for non-football sports. ND's ACC revenue for 2019-20 (pre-COVID) was $10.8M, while full ACC schools were $32.3M.
CFBHeather wrote more on how ND could exit the ACC. It's tough to get a firm number on what the total cost might be -- lots of details not known -- but my best estimate based on publicly available data would be between $55M-$112M to depart in 2024.
Even at the high end of that tally, ND would figure to make that money back with a B1G TV deal in a few years. But ND is already poised to make some serious TV $. Its deal with NBC expires in 2025 & there figures to be a lot of bidders. The Irish have options. Must be nice.
2 other factors impact ND's decisions though: A home for non-football sports & access to the playoff. ACC answers issue 1 if it stays afloat. We don't know what the playoff will look like in 4 years. 8 teams? 12? SEC & B1G form their own playoff? That matters more.
So ND isn't in a hurry to decide its future, but the Irish are the lynchpin for further expansion by the B1G. That means super conferences are in a bit of a holding pattern. The B12 and P12 have an incentive to move fast -- no one else does, bc they're all waiting on ND.
Now let's talk about the ACC's grant of rights. It runs through 2036 -- 14 years from now -- and it means the ACC owns the broadcast rights for all members until then. The rumor mill has largely ignored how big an obstacle this really is -- and it's enormous.
Another aside: adding new teams or opening up the TV contract would *NOT* void the existing GoR. They are separate documents. If new teams joined the ACC, they'd have to sign the same GoR as everyone else. Same for departing teams - unless > 50% leave.
What would it take for a team to leave? An exit fee (3x annual revenue) would be in the neighborhood of $120-150M. Then, assuming the ACC allowed a team to buy out its media rights, you'd be looking at another $300M or so, minimum, from 2024-36.
But here's the thing: The ACC has no incentive to settle for a buyout. Instead, it could simply say, "We own your broadcast rights. Your games will air on our network or not at all." And what value is there for any other league to add an ACC team that can't earn TV money?
The general feeling is, eventually someone will challenge the GoR in court, but that's problematic, too. For 1, the super conference writing was on the wall a year ago. Several teams have had lawyers looking over the GoR. None have challenged it yet. What does that tell you?
Or look at Texas and Oklahoma. They're riding out their own GoR because the B12 wasn't going to give them an easy out and they didn't think there was value in taking it to the courts and possibly losing. But P12, B1G & B12 deals end soon. ACC has 14 years left.
Another thing: There's little incentive for a school to challenge the GoR without some certainty they have a landing spot. But what league is going to make an offer to a school when it doesn't know if that school will have media rights for the next 14 years? It's a Catch 22.
But wait... what if 8+ teams leave & the GoR is dissolved? Problem: 8 teams don't have a home elsewhere. B1G & SEC are looking at $100M/year payouts. Remember, it's not about increasing the size of the pie -- it's about bigger slices. There aren't 8 schools that can do that.
Long story short, there's not an obvious path for anyone to depart the ACC in the near term without a massive & expensive legal battle. In the longer term, the equation changes. We'll have playoff certainty, knowledge on NCAA/oversight. Revenue gaps up, GoR length down.
So, to borrow a line from "Space Balls," when will "then" be "now"? The most logical answer is the NEXT round of TV deals - possibly in the early 2030s. That's a long way off, and that creates another Catch 22, bc it's gonna be hard for top teams to survive that long.
Another aside: This isn't all about money. Perception matters, too. What happens if recruits view the ACC as the JV of CFB amid the super conferences in the B1G & SEC? Even if you can spend and build, can you overcome a perception gap? It's a big issue. But back to the dollars...
MattBrownEP has addressed this: It's not (currently) how much $ you have, but rather how you spend it.
https://extrapointsmb.com/college-football-realignment-budgets-data/… Clemson outspends Ohio St on football because it uses 41% of its budget for football, while OSU uses just 27%.
BUT... keep those same % & add $50M/year to OSU's TV deal & now the Buckeyes are spending roughly $13M/year MORE on football than Clemson but still just 27% of its total budget. And remember when OSU AD Gene Smith said it'd cost $13M in NIL to build his team?
As 1 coach told me after last year's shake-up, you can only build so many buildings. The real need for this $ is panic over the perceived inevitability of paying players & this gets us to another possible inflection point. What happens if super conferences go pro?
A lot of readers have asked about contraction. I've yet to talk to any admin who thinks that's going to happen in any league any time soon. But if, say, the ACC decided it would collectively bargain with players as employees -- would all 14 schools be on board with that?
It's impossible to say right now, but there's a scenario where a few smaller, education-centered schools opt to leave for a league that wants to maintain amateurism (like the Ivy League), while others join a league generating more revenue. Now you have 8+ ready to move on.
But this is all a ways off -- years, at least. That's not to say some more shakeups couldn't happen before then -- again P12/B12 have an incentive to move quickly & ND is a wild card -- but treat other rumors with a grain of salt -- particularly if reported by a swimming account.
Again, this is all hypothetical, and I don't encourage going too far down that road because there are simply too many unknown variables. But the larger point is that the ACC's near term is likely stable, and its long term will be dictated by a lot of outside forces. -30-
