SMU AD Rick Hart talks move to ACC, reaching $159 million fundraising goal

Monday has been circled on SMU athletic director Rick Hart’s calendar for 10 months.

After the Pac-12 failed to deliver a new TV contract, conference realignment dominoes began to fall last summer. Colorado was the first to make a move, darting for the Big 12 in late July. Arizona, Arizona State and Utah shortly followed.

The move left Cal and Stanford without a conference, while SMU had been pushing to join the ACC. While Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina pushed back on adding the trio and getting away from the league’s East Coast history, member schools voted 12-3 to add the institutions last September.

Monday kicks off the first day of SMU’s official membership in the ACC for the 2024-25 academic year, with plans for a welcome party in Dallas.

“It’s really a series of moments between September 1 and now,” Hart told On3 in a recent phone interview. “I went through Moody [Coliseum] yesterday on my way to basketball practice, and all the logos of the ACC schools have been up on the wall, and I got chill bumps.”

SMU will not accept Tier 1 TV revenue to join ACC

SMU did make some sacrifices to join the ACC. The Mustangs agreed to not accept TV revenue in its first nine years in the conference. The College Football Playoff management committee also unanimously agreed in February upon an undisclosed amount of money for SMU that will go to the ACC. It’s still less revenue than typically distributed to power conference schools.

To counteract the loss in revenue, SMU turned to its top boosters which will pay out $200 million over the next nine years. The athletic department also announced in June it set a new fundraising record of $159 million during 2023-24.

A source tells On3’s Billy Embody and Pete Nakos that SMU only gave up Tier 1 TV rights. The Mustangs will get some TV revenue, more than they were pulling from the American Athletic Conference.

According to Hart, most of those dollars came in when news broke last September that SMU was joining the ACC. The fundraising totals broke SMU’s previous record by about $70 to $80 million.

“Look, a lot of it is attributable to the transition,” the athletic director said. “There’s no doubt about it. In fact, there’s a pretty straight line that $125 million of it or so was to support this transition. Having said that, it was still a very strong fundraising year, even absent that, but it’s certainly not $159 million. And so I think it speaks to the enthusiasm around the opportunity that this provides, not just athletics, but really the university.

“A lot of these gifts and a lot of the individuals who generously supported this effort, they’re doing it because they understand that, unlike any other investment that they might make in SMU, this one will benefit the entire university community. And they get that. We athletics get credit because we’re the repository of those gifts and those investments, but it’s really an institutional moment, and it’s really an investment in continuing to elevate the university.”

SMU stepped up donor operations with ACC move

The funds will help support the new 192,500-square-foot football operations center and club space, which is on track to open this season. Hart has also been focused on making sure all facets of his department are ready for the jump to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

SMU has propped up a studio so it can broadcast linear events on the ACC Network and ESPN. The next step is operationalizing it. Hart said SMU knew it would need to step up its donor operations with the jump to the Power 4.

“It was part of our vision for how we would compete in the ACC, so anytime a school transitions into a new league, there’s a ramping-up period, if you will,” he said. “Until you’re a full member relative to revenue, that’s pretty typical. We knew because it’s publicly known that if the ACC were to expand, not only were they going to do so, unless it was revenue neutral, but really, it needed to be revenue positive. And we knew that. You figure out, what does that look like? How does that work for us? How does that work for them? Is there alignment where we both feel like we’re benefiting?

“We knew that if this happened, and we committed to it, that it was going to require a significant investment from our donor base so that we could compete in the league. We’re not going to transition into the league, just to be in the league. We want to leverage these opportunities. And the way you leverage the opportunities is you have to compete for championships. These investments allow us to be positioned to do that.

Hart is heavily emphasizing the growth of SMU’s fan and donor base, too. While top donors have already stepped up to help with the ACC transition, broadening the fan base will be crucial. Set to enter his 12th year as SMU’s athletic director, Hart said season ticket sales for football have doubled.

Expanding the Mustang Club is a goal with the conference move, too. He said the goal is to hit 5,000 with the current number around 4,800.

“It goes without saying, but when you’re competing at the highest level, and you’re competing against the teams that we will now be competing against, it’s just going to broaden the interest and elevate the interest even from maybe someone who’s not an SMU fan,” Hart said. “Maybe they don’t have a connection to the university, per se, but they love college sports or they’re even looking for quality entertainment in and around Dallas. And now we checked that box for a lot of people.”

How will House settlement impact SMU?

The impact of the House settlement is top of mind for every athletic director in the country this summer. As part of the terms, which have not been ratified yet, all 32 Division I conferences will pay some $2.8 billion in damages over 10 years. In addition, schools, at their discretion, will be able to share up to $22 million annually with athletes.

Hart is evaluating what it will mean for SMU from a budget perspective. He also wants to make sure the Mustangs compete from the jump in their new league. They hired Andy Enfield as the new men’s basketball coach this summer. And SMU’s first home ACC event will be a men’s soccer match on Sept. 7 against Pitt.

“We want to sell out Ford [Stadium] and Moody [Coliseum] and make sure that those venues are full,” Hart said. “We want to make sure the game day experience is elevated and on par with the expectations of not just our fans who have been attending games, but new fans we hope to attract and retain.”