There was a time when the ACC appeared a rickety enterprise. It had become Little Brother — at least in football, the sport that matters most in terms of TV and money — in its region to the almighty SEC, and in a time of rampant realignment we wondered if the famous basketball league might soon go the way of other basketball leagues in this football-mad world.
Today the ACC is a place you’d want to be — and stay. It has won three of the past eight NCAA basketball titles and sent a record six teams to the Sweet 16 this March. It has claimed as many of the past three football national championships as the SEC.
If ACC football across the board isn’t quite a match for the SEC’s product, the ACC’s version has surely gotten better and — with new coaches at Miami, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Syracuse — could get better still. Considering all sports and academics as well, the ACC absolutely belongs in the upper crust of the upper crust.
The ACC's Football Kickoff starts Thursday in Charlotte. Commissioner John Swofford will use the forum to announce plans for an ACC Network, which will begin airing in 2019 and will fall under ESPN's voluminous umbrella. In the exalted realm of power conferences, you need your own network. Being pragmatic, you'd prefer to be partnered with the Worldwide Leader. (The SEC is. The Big Ten Network is a Fox entity. The Pac-12 Network is unaffiliated.) It's not as if ACC teams have never played on ESPN — ask Dickie V. about his Dukies — but a branded ACC Network is yet another sign of conference health.
While driving to Charlotte on Wednesday, Georgia Tech Athletic Director Mike Bobinski spoke of the esteem in which Swofford has come to be held. “I remember when I came to Tech in 2013,” Bobinski said. “At the league meetings, John got the ADs in a room and said, ‘Are we in this together or not? Are we going to stick together, or is it going to be every man for himself?’ With what’s been done, particularly at the football level, we’ve turned that corner from a league that was vulnerable into something’s that’s really good.”
By adding Syracuse and Pittsburgh and then Louisville, Swofford prevented the ACC from becoming what he’d just rendered the Big East — a ghost ship of a conference. By allowing Notre Dame to become a full member in every sport except football, he added the biggest name in college sports. (And, should Notre Dame tire of football independence, it’s contractually bound to join the ACC.) By locking membership into a grant of rights agreement, he all but assured that Maryland will remain the last school leaving this league.
(A grant of rights means that the media money for the home games of any team that leaves the conference would remain with the ACC for the length of agreement, which ESPN's Brett McMurphy reports has been extended through 2036.)
Mike Slive, who retired from the SEC last year, is considered the gold standard of neo-commissioners. If Swofford lacks the Slive performance element, his work has been no less impressive. (And SEC basketball, it must be said, slipped so badly under Slive that new commish Greg Sankey has hired ex-Big Easter Mike Tranghese to brainstorm.)
Said Bobinski: “John loathes the spotlight. He much prefers to work behind the scene in a quiet methodical way. I think adding Notre Dame will be looked back on as a big piece of the future of this league. That’s a pretty big chip.”
Not so long ago, some among us regarded Clemson and Florida State as ACC short-timers. They’ll enter the football season ranked in the top five of most every poll, each having graced a recent national championship game, each still a proud ACC member. This isn’t a league on its last legs. This is a league walking tall.
