Swoffie saves the ACC at expense of football schools

Sep 13, 2012, 9:05 AM

In the conference upheaval of the last 2 years, Swofford now looks like a reactionary. As some conferences made strategic moves to increase their football footprint and the conference TV money, Swoffie's strategy was to add Pittsburgh and Syracuse? We know those two schools brought nothing to the conference football-wise, but I guess it made Swofford look like he was at least doing something.

So now the ACC is at 14 teams and Swoffie just got a $50 million exit fee passed. How the heck does he get a $50 million exit fee passed when some football schools have been rumored to possibly be contemplating a conference move? Well, I'm sure the carrot of Notre Dame eventually becoming a full member had something to do with it.

Sure, the addition of ND sounds good and looks good on the surface. That game will certainly look good on a lot of future football schedules, but we know that in the end it's all about money. So the positive spin becomes, well Notre Dame will likely become a full member in a few years and bring their TV money with them. Well, according to a recent article on ESPN (http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/dollars/post/_/id/1576/nbc-likely-to-hold-on-to-notre-dame), Notre Dame's current contract with NBC only pays $15 million a year.

This is how the math looks to me:
Current ACC payout per school is around $20 million for the 12 schools. I would assume the payout per member will go down at 14 schools, but for the sake of this discussion let's say the 14 members will still get $20 million each. Now we add Notre Dame and let's say in 4 years they become a full member and let's say Notre Dame's contract with NBC will be worth $20 million a season then. So Notre Dame brings their $20 million into the conference which has a net zero effect on member payouts, but now there are 15 teams and a 16th must be added. Well, since there are no more "Notre Dame's" to add to the conference that 16th school will have a negative impact on the payout to each member.

I really think the basketball schools are primarily concerned about preserving the conference - that is their top priority; while the football schools are mostly concerned about increasing revenue to they can compete on a national level. Well, I don't see how revenue is going up anytime soon. Swoffie has saved the ACC as a brand but the football schools still don't get the monetary bump that one would hope by adding Notre Dame.

The ACC's future is a 16 team conference. No other conference is splitting their money 16 ways. The ACC will have to have the nation's largest TV contract just for members to stay even with the other conferences on a per school payout basis. That's not likely to happen in a basketball first conference, and now the football schools are stuck with a $50 million exit fee.

Someone tell me what I am missing here, because right now all I can see is that the ACC has secured it's future existence but it has been done at the expense of the football schools.

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Swoffie saves the ACC at expense of football schools

completely agree with you***

Re: Swoffie - if he could land KY that would be a coup

Re: Swoffie - if he could land KY that would be a coup

"play"= pay***

The ACC presidents and AD's would never vote to add....

Re: Swoffie saves the ACC at expense of football schools

I agree... Dook and UNC need the ACC to remain

Re: Swoffie saves the ACC at expense of football schools

Tomcat - what is "astronomical"?

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