Report: ACC presidents to meet on Friday, expansion vote could happen
A decision on ACC expansion finally appears close to taking place. ACC presidents are set to meet Friday to discuss adding Stanford, Cal and SMU, according to Stewart Mandel. The meeting was set to take place earlier this week but was pushed back due to a shooting on the University of North Carolina campus.
A vote could also take place on Friday, according to Mandel. The ACC needs at least 12 votes of yes to add Stanford, Cal and SMU.
Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and NC State have been the schools opposed to the ACC expanding. One of those would need to flip in order for Stanford, Cal and SMU to be ad
ACC school presidents were originally set to meet Monday night to discuss expansion. However, that meeting was obviously delayed.
Athletic directors from the league met last week to discuss expansion, but no vote was taken at the time.
At one point it seemed unlikely that Cal, Stanford and SMU would be added to the ACC. However, there have been plenty of twists and turns over the past several weeks and it seems that the vote could truly go either way.
The four schools that were against the ACC expanding didn’t believe that it made sense to expand to a different footprint of the United States without serious financial gain. They may now get that, though.
On3 was told that in order for votes to be reconsidered, the ACC would likely need to finalize an unequal revenue sharing model — based on performance — that would potentially benefit those schools. The ACC announced a “success incentive initiative” in May.
The ACC said in a statement at the time: “The specifics of the plan are in progress and will be solidified in the coming months. Under this initiative, the implementation of the success incentives will come solely from the performance of teams in revenue generating postseason competition. All other revenues will continue to be equally shared as currently outlined.”
Three months later, a plan has yet to be finalized. However, it could be getting close.
According to Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger, if the ACC expands by three schools, the league stands to make an additional $72 million in revenue from ESPN. Cal, Stanford and SMU would be making financial concessions to join the ACC, according to Dellenger. The ACC could then take a large portion of that money and distribute it through an incentive-based model that would reward schools that perform well in the postseason in revenue generating sports.