ESPN insider hints at future ACC shake-up over next six years

For all of the seismic changes across college sports conferences over the past couple of years, the ACC has managed to remain in tact. Although the other four Power 5 leagues either added or lost teams through realignment, the ACC kept the same 15 schools it has had since 2014.

However, it likely won’t stay that way.

In a recent article about conference realignment, ESPN senior writer Pete Thamel pointed to TV deals as being a major factor in the ACC’s future. The conference’s current contract with ESPN runs through 2036, while the other four major conferences’ deals will expire well before then.

That gives them a chance to increase revenue and has led to concern among some ACC leaders about how their schools will stack up financially against the rest of the country. Still, others are fine with the way things currently stand.

“There’s a disparate nature to the ACC,” an ACC source told Thamel. “You have publics and privates and big schools and small schools. It’s a little bit of the ACC uniqueness. But times like now, it really, really shows itself. In the last year, it has become so apparent.”

Generally speaking, the schools with the biggest football brands (like Clemson) are the most worried. They face quite the conundrum, as Thamel estimates in his article it would cost $100 million to leave the conference. They would also face an uphill battle to get access to their own games’ TV money until the current ACC deal expires.

If the schools were to stay in the ACC, however, they would risk falling behind other conferences financially anyway. Either way they would likely take a loss, and the question now becomes which route will cause the least amount of damage.

With such a complicated question, one source believes it will take time before a decision is ultimately made.

“I don’t expect anything in six months,” an industry source said. “But in six years, it’d be shocking if everything looked the same. The other leagues get an additional bump before the ACC comes up.”

It seems the ACC is due for major change in the future, all weighing the decision the conference makes in the next few seasons.