They destroyed the ACC, in order to save it

They went ahead and destroyed the ACC in order to save it.

Rather than wait, from a position of relative strength, to see if the college-athletics bubble burst and made the ACC’s long-term television deal more attractive to Clemson and Florida State, the other members of the league panicked and assured their eventual exit, and North Carolina’s as well.

By planning for disaster, in the most tortured and short-sighted way possible, they ensured it.

Ensuring the inevitable departure of its three most valuable schools, adding three athletically irrelevant ones while oozing across two more time zones like spilled milk, and getting a relatively insignificant financial boost for doing it, the panicking presidents turned the ACC into an overgrown AAC.

Founded on a Wednesday in Greensboro in 1953, the ACC sowed the seeds for its own destruction 70 years later on a conference call Friday morning when N.C. State flipped from opposing the addition of California, Southern Methodist and Stanford to acquiescing, giving the ACC the 12 votes it needed to expand.

N.C. State chancellor Randy Woodson – continuing to singlehandedly disprove Bill Friday’s belief that university presidents are the best stewards of athletics – held the dagger that stabbed what used to be the ACC in the back, hours after the UNC-Chapel Hill board of trustees issued an unprecedented statement publicly announcing its opposition to expansion, clearly a last-ditch, late-night attempt to keep Woodson aligned.

Whatever hopes N.C. State may have had of UNC taking them along if and when the End Times come went right out the window then; Woodson all but condemned his own school to future second-tier status. So, for that matter, did Duke and Wake Forest, acting out of fear of something that wasn’t even guaranteed to happen, clinging to dollars that are an order of magnitude short of making a real difference in the athletics arms race.

The ACC actually found a way to get worse in football without Dabo Swinney going walkabout in the Outback or something. The three new schools have combined for 30 wins the past two seasons; SMU’s most famous accomplishment is one of the worst scandals in the history of college athletics, although in today’s vernacular, they basically got the death penalty for having an NIL collective.

Oh, and men’s basketball, what the ACC was built on … it’s almost too painful to consider. Five teams in the NCAA tournament is going to become the norm – an aspiration! – when you fold these three basketball programs into the ACC’s collective strength of schedule. This is felony crime against the NET.

And all for tip money. Hundreds of millions of dollars sounds impressive in a press release but the additional revenue the ACC will take from ESPN and distribute to the existing schools instead of the new ones – SMU is buying admission to a club that would never have it otherwise, and Stanford and debt-ridden Cal aren’t far behind – doesn’t come even an eighth of the way to closing the revenue gap with the SEC and the Big Ten. The ACC sold its birthright for a mess of pottage.

Such drastic, precipitous action to protect against the potential future departure of Clemson and Florida State and UNC? Florida State started this playing a losing hand and somehow the rest of the ACC folded. (“Did you have it, kid?” “Sorry, John. I don’t remember.”) Thanks to the grant of rights, the ACC had through about 2030 or so before anyone could realistically depart, and even if they could, the state of the TV rights market now doesn’t incentivize the Big Ten or SEC to expand, at least with valuable properties that would command additional money.

Pushing through this expansion over their objections will certainly ensure their departures, and perhaps even hasten them, one way or another. You’d like to think someone at the ACC checked to make sure adding these teams doesn’t somehow weaken the grant of rights, but the lawyering will only intensify.

There was no reason to act now, to prepare for something that might happen in seven years, just because the Big 12 and Big Ten picked over the Pac-12’s bones. That’s something that could be addressed if and when it happened, and almost certainly with a better menu of interested schools to choose from than these leftovers no one else wanted. It was a late-night deal at Food Lion: Buy one irrelevant football program, get two free. Just think for a moment how insane the phrase “The ACC should add Cal, Stanford and SMU” would have sounded even two months ago. Anyone making that argument would have been laughed out of the room. Panic is a hell of a drug.

The ACC has its own network and the Big 12 does not, and even in this moment of television uncertainty that would have kept the ACC ahead. And at a moment when ESPN and the ACC Network are unavailable on half the nation’s cable systems because of a carriage dispute, never mind the deflated rights market the Pac-12 encountered, you’d think this would be an imprudent time to make irreversible decisions. But dangle $3 million a year in front of a college president and they’ll sign over their firstborn, if they can wipe away the drool. (Their own.)

Notre Dame pushed as hard for this as anyone, the 20 percent partner with 100 percent of a vote, and you can bet it’s just the first step in a plan to get out of its commitment to join the ACC in football if it ever abandons independence. Weakening and splintering the ACC will make it possible to join the Big Ten, where Notre Dame clearly would prefer to be. It’s a real Hyman Roth play, pretending to be an ally while sowing chaos within.

Of course, the real question is why these other ACC schools even listen to Notre Dame at this point. You can’t blame Notre Dame for acting in its nature any more than you can blame a raccoon for going through your garbage. It’s your fault you didn’t secure the cans.

It no longer matters. The damage is done. The ACC, suddenly obsessed with preparing for an exodus of its most valued members that by its own actions went from hypothetical to inevitable, has added three schools that bring nothing to the table in football or men’s basketball and are irrelevant in their own markets. Instead of booting Boston College from the league — that would have been the smart move! — the ACC tripled down.

So afraid of being left behind, 12 members of the ACC did the one thing that would assure they will be.

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