The ACC has been locked in as one of college athletics' "power conferences" since it began in 1953. The Tobacco Road-based league is a traditional power in college basketball, while flaunting some of the most dominant programs in college football history. And yet, as other, more monied leagues continue to expand and further dominate the landscape, the ACC continues to morph.
The league began focused primarily on Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. Now, it spans both coasts with an outpost in Texas and is under constant threat to lose some of its biggest members. Fourteen years ago, the ACC was the catalyst for the breakup of another football power conference: the Big East. Now, it must duck and weave to avoid the same fate at the hands of the Big Ten and SEC.
Let's go back to the beginning, and see how the current 17-team, bicoastal behemoth of a conference formed over the last 72 years, and evaluate what may lie ahead as college sports as we know it continue to change every year.
1953: Seven Charter Members Break Away From the Southern Conference
Today, the Southern Conference is a competitive FCS-level Division I league featuring programs like The Citadel, East Tennessee State, Furman and Wofford. When it formed in the early 1920s, however, it was comprised of the schools that would go on to form the bedrock of both the ACC and SEC. The SEC schools would break away in 1932, forming what has become one of the most powerful leagues in college athletics. It would take nearly 20 years for the seven schools that would go on to form the ACC to do the same.
In an effort to de-emphasize the importance of football on its campuses, the SoCon put forth a bowl game ban in 1951, one that would have blocked teams like undefeated Maryland from facing Tennessee in the Sugar Bowl and Clemson from taking on Miami in the Gator Bowl. The two schools defied the ban and played those games, earning bans from conference play a year later. The bowl decision and penalties ultimately proved to be the impetus for those schools—joined by Duke, North Carolina, NC State, South Carolina and Wake Forest—to break away and form their own league, which became the ACC.
Virginia, a former SoCon member that became an independent program in 1937, was admitted to the league in Dec. '53 after the ACC's first season as a football league.
1970s: ACC Brings in Georgia Tech After South Carolina Seeks Independence
The ACC remained a very consistent conference for the first 18 years of its existence, but as is often the case for those who hit that milestone, the draw of independence began to claw at one league member. Just two years after winning the conference in football, ACC member South Carolina withdrew from the league to strike out on its own, with The State citing issues raised by football coach and athletic director Paul Dietzel, including the ACC's weak nonconference record and the league's academic requirements, as reasons for the Gamecocks to leave. South Carolina football would spend 20 years as an independent program, with other sports joining the Metro Conference, until it gained entrance into the SEC in 1991.
Seven years after the Gamecocks' departure, the ACC found their replacement in Georgia Tech. Tech had been a member of the Southern Conference with the ACC's founding members, leaving in 1932 to join the SEC. Legendary Yellow Jackets coach Bobby Dodd pulled his school out of that league in 1964 in response to the rule that allowed coaches to recruit an unlimited number of players and running some off to hit scholarship limits, stating that the program "can’t compete in a league where this is being done," a former Georgia Tech offensive lineman told The Athletic.
Tech later failed to rejoin the league in 1973, and six years later, agreed to join many of its former SoCon conferencemates in the ACC, first for basketball and other sports in '79, adding football to the league upon the conclusion of existing scheduling contracts in '83.
1991: ACC Powers Up With Florida State
Though it seems relatively tame by modern standards, the early 1990s saw a major wave of conference realignment that has helped shape modern college athletics—though most of the big programs joining new leagues came from the ranks of football independents. Penn State made the Big Ten 11, Arkansas joined the SEC (and was later joined by South Carolina) and Florida State—a bourgeoning football power under Bobby Bowden—added the Sunshine State to the ACC's map.
FSU, which had dalliances with the SEC, was approved by the ACC on an 8–0 vote in Sept. 1990, and hit the ground running. The Seminoles football program had won at least 10 games and finished in the top four in both major polls for five years before beginning play as an ACC program in '92 (other Seminoles programs joined the league the year prior), with seven consecutive bowl wins including a pair of Fiesta Bowls, a Sugar Bowl and a Cotton Bowl. Bowden and the Noles would win at least a share of the ACC title in each of their first nine years in the league, capturing the '93 and '99 national titles and appearing in a major bowl each year until 2001.
2004 to '05: Big East Raid, Pt. 1
The ACC sought to expand up the Eastern Seaboard in the early aughts, targeting the other prominent East Coast power conference: the Big East. Initially targeting Boston College, Miami and Syracuse, pressure applied from government officials in Virginia on UVA led the ACC to swap the Orange out for Virginia Tech. The Hurricanes and Hokies would join the ACC in 2004, while the Eagles joined them in '05.
The moves inflamed tensions between the two leagues, with UConn, Pitt, Rutgers and West Virginia filing lawsuits against the ACC and the departing teams over the poaching. This was just the first wave of ACC-on-Big East violence, of course.
2011 to '14: Big East Raid, Pt. 2
Phase two took place in the early 2010s, with Syracuse and Pitt accepted invitations to join the ACC early on during the 2011 football season. The invitations were reportedly set to go out to basketball archrivals Syracuse and UConn, until intervention by the ACC's existing New England program—Boston College—derailed the Huskies' chances to make the jump.
From a 2011 report by The Boston Globe:
While Syracuse presented no problem, UConn did — to BC, which was still fuming over what it perceived to be vitriolic comments made when BC was finally invited to join the ACC and started competing in 2005. UConn and Pittsburgh filed a lawsuit against BC, and Calhoun made comments about never playing BC again.
DeFilippo does not deny that BC opposed the inclusion of UConn.
“We didn’t want them in,’’ he said. “It was a matter of turf. We wanted to be the New England team.’’
Notre Dame remains a football independent, but in 2012 reached a deal to join the ACC in other sports, along with a scheduling agreement that sees the football program play a handful of ACC programs on the gridiron each year. The first decade-plus of the arrangement helped berth a new longterm rivalry for the Fighting Irish, as they signed a 12-year football series with Clemson in 2025.
Syracuse and Pitt's moves were not the end of the instability. The Big Ten was next to move, adding Maryland from the Big Ten and Rutgers from the American Athletic Conference—the league formed by the remaining Big East football schools after the non-football playing members broke off to form a basketball-centric league under the Big East banner. The ACC moved to add Louisville, another program left behind in the AAC, to replace the Terrapins.
2024: Lawsuits, West Coast Bail Outs and Texas Money
The ACC is currently bigger than it has ever been, with 17 full-time members as well as Notre Dame. At the same time, it has never had less stability.
The last major wave of conference realignment saw the Big 12 severely hampered with Oklahoma and Texas leaving for the SEC in 2024, the domino effect from which led to the destruction of the Pac-12 as we knew it. The Big Ten answered by adding UCLA and USC, later adding Oregon and Washington as the West Coast power league crumbled. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah fled for the Big 12, while the ACC answered by adding Cal and Stanford—two big West Coast brands but largely struggling football programs. SMU, formerly of the American, struck while the iron was hot, offering to forego league payments for the first nine years of ACC membership—which could total around $200 million. The addition of the Mustangs paid immediate dividends, as SMU made a surprise run to the College Football Playoff in 2024.
The ACC did not lose any schools in this round of realignment, but the additions were a clear response to that possibility. Clemson and Florida State—the ACC's most stalwart college football powers—sued the league in early 2024 over the league's grant of rights agreement that ties schools' media rights to the league as well as its hefty exit fee. That combination made it very difficult for any school to leave the league, in the event that one of the Power 2 (the Big Ten and SEC) came calling with their formidable financial might.
The sides settled in 2025, with an agreement that reduces the exit fee, which drops off of a cliff following the 2029–30 season, putting a pretty firm date on when we may see not only Clemson and FSU, but intriguing programs like Georgia Tech, Miami, North Carolina and Virginia sniff around at other league possibilities.
What Lies Ahead for the ACC?
While the power conferences are all quite bloated now, the 17-plus team ACC chief among them, any exits will likely lead to further additions.
UConn, a historic target of the league, is back atop the college basketball world with its recent men's and women's national championships. The inconsistent football program has been a weight on the rest of the athletic department, and the basketball-focused powers that be in Storrs likely prefer to remain in the Big East for hoops, but the ACC could once again at the Huskies. Boston College likely wouldn't have enough influence to stop that addition if the other schools are largely in favor.
Tulane, a former SEC program along with Georgia Tech, has invested heavily to improve its football program, becoming one of the best in the Group of 5 in short order. The New Orleans-based private school matches the profile of many other ACC programs and could be a reasonable addition. Memphis has been aggressively courting power conferences and falls in the traditional ACC footprint (as much as that matters now with schools in California). USF is back on the rise and could add the sizable Tampa market and potentially replace one of the Florida schools, should they leave.
Of course, there is no guarantee that another league comes calling for Clemson, Florida State or any other program, but the only constant in modern college athletics is change. Odds are that the ACC will look different a decade from now.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as ACC Expansion History: Looking Back to Understand How Much Bigger the Conference Could Get .
