Former ESPN president John Skipper makes case for ACC to merge with Pac-12

Former ESPN president John Skipper has a bold solution for ACC admins griping about equal revenue distribution and Pac-12 leaders staring down the barrel of a less-than-optimal media deal and a potentially fracturing league: Merge the two.

On “The Dan LeBatard Show with Stugotz,” Skipper offered his logic for what is effectively an ACC expansion to the West Coast. In short, it builds out the footprint of the ACC Network to increase revenue while creating a league with footholds on each coast.

“I might, and I’m not certain that ESPN is not interested in being in the Pac 12 business. I know it’s been reported, but I’m not certain that’s true. I think that the ACC should expand, or should merge with the Pac 12, which now has 10 teams. I would take eight of those teams, change my footprint, have a 24-team conference with a western division and their ACC Network footprint would expand to the West Coast,” Skipper said. “You could probably force a renegotiation with ESPN for a new deal and you could solve both problems. The ACC would get more money, expand its footprint, could compete with the SEC and the Big 10.”

The logistics of which current ACC teams would regularly travel to play in states like California, Oregon, Washington in a western division is an obvious sticking point to Skipper’s idea. Every current ACC school is in the eastern time zone.

Further, while the TV revenue would go up, the money would then need to be divided amongst a bigger pool of schools. But as Skipper mentioned, he thinks the ACC, by expanding the conference and therefore the footprint of the ACC Network, could renegotiate a more lucrative media rights deal.

“Because it’s still in — it’s a national channel. It still is watched by most people in the footprint, as opposed to five or 10 percent. And because of the clout of ESPN in negotiations,” Skipper said. 

Also, there would be in inherent boost in revenue, slightly offset by new schools joining, as Skipper explained.

“The ACC Network has contracts with all the distributors that pay an in-conference fee and pay an out-of-conference fee based on states, and that is not negotiable. That is enforceable and suddenly all those subscribers — it’s a declining universe, there’s still 15 million subscribers in that footprint, give or take — and they would suddenly be paying a couple of bucks a year for the ACC Network,” Skipper said.