College Football

ACC presidents set to meet as league considers expansion

Updated Aug. 31, 2023 6:33 p.m. ET

Atlantic Coast Conference university leaders are set to meet Friday morning as the league tries to come to a decision on expanding West with Stanford, California and SMU, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told The Associated Press.

It was unclear if the presidents will take a decisive vote on adding new members, said the person, who spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because the conference and schools were not making internal discussions public.

The ACC has been weighing expansion for several weeks. The presidents and chancellors were scheduled to hold a call Monday night to delve into expansion, but the deadly shooting of a professor at the University of North Carolina led the conference to put its business on hold. ESPN first reported Friday's rescheduled call.

The presidents discussed adding schools three weeks ago but chose not to take a vote, knowing they likely didn't have 12 of the 15 votes necessary for approval. Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina and North Carolina State have been against adding schools.

Oregon, Washington join Big Ten; Arizona, Arizona State, Utah join Big 12

Since then, Commissioner Jim Phillips has been working on revenue distribution models that he hopes will bring consensus. Adding three schools would require ESPN to pay more in yearly media rights revenue to the ACC, but the new members would receive greatly reduced payments upon entry and slowly ramp up.

That means more revenue for current members, but how it is divvied up has been the sticking point.

The interest from the ACC — and the urgency from Stanford and Cal — increased after the Pac-12 was plundered by the Big Ten and Big 12 and left with just four schools committed beyond this year.

The Northern California rivals have been scrambling to find a Power Five conference home for 2024-25 and beyond with the Pac-12 on the brink of extinction and only Washington State and Oregon State left to rebuild with.

Reporting by The Associated Press.

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