Explaining why no Big 12 team would leave for ACC

Conference realignment has shaken up college sports in a major way over the past few years and doesn’t appear to be slowing down. No league has been left unaffected by the changes, including the Big 12 and ACC.

The Big 12 has added eight new members in the past two years as Oklahoma and Texas are set to depart for the SEC. Meanwhile, the ACC is set to bring on California, Stanford and SMU in 2024.

Comparing the two leagues at this moment, it’s clear the Big 12 is in a better spot. The league has a media rights deal with ESPN through the 2030-31 season that pays significantly more than the ACC’s deal that runs through 2036. We’ve already seen schools such as Florida State make it clear they want out, as the Seminoles suing the conference.

That reason, as On3‘s Andy Staples explained, is why we could eventually see ACC schools leave for the Big 12 but not the other way around.

“What’s the incentive for the Big 12 school to move?” Staples asked. “There’s no more money. Which one seems more stable right now? Which one has somebody suing it right now?”

We’ve already seen the end of the Pac-12 this past season as every school but Oregon State and Washington State departed from the conference. Although the ACC has managed to stay in tact for now, it could be in store for a similar fate given the direction things are headed.

Staples pointed to another reason why the Big 12 seems to be more stable for the future than the ACC. He noted that all of the schools in the conference hold a similar status in the college sports world, with no one school being able to claim more relevance than the rest.

That certainly isn’t the case in the ACC, where you have programs such as Florida State, Clemson and Miami mixed in with schools such as Boston College and Pittsburgh. The schools with bigger fan bases have already made clear that they believe they deserve a bigger piece of the conference revenue pie, which is currently split up evenly between every school.

“(The Big 12 schools) are all alike,” Staples said. “The ACC schools are not all alike. Florida State and Boston College are very different. That is in itself a problem. The Big 12, there’s a definite ceiling on it. But you’re also not going to have a situation where somebody’s like, ‘we’re so much more desirable than everybody else. We’re getting the hell out of here.’ You don’t have to worry about that now.”

Ultimately, we’ll have to wait to see what happens with the Big 12 and ACC’s future. For now, though, it seems highly unlikely that any Big 12 school is going anywhere.