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Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Entertainment
Mike McDaniel

College Football Fans React to Cal, Stanford, SMU Joining ACC

ACC Stanford Cal SMU Football Atlantic Coast Conference

At long last, the Atlantic Coast Conference school presidents voted to add Cal, Stanford and SMU to the conference on Friday morning, sources told Sports Illustrated‘s Pat Forde. The schools are set to join the league in 2024.

The vote culminates a month-long saga for the Pac-12, during which the conference has almost completely disintegrated. Only two members of the conference remain committed beyond the current academic year—Oregon State and Washington State—and at this point, it seems much more likely they will join another existing conference rather than pulling other schools into a revamped Pac-12.

As for the ACC, the move was meant to stabilize the conference in a rapidly changing college football landscape. With schools such as Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina and NC State remaining as flight risks to the conference, the additions of Cal, Stanford and SMU bolster the league’s lineup in case prominent members bolt.

The ACC will earn more than $70 million in additional revenue from ESPN by adding the three new schools, an amount which will kick in automatically due to pro-rata increases that already exist in the network’s television contract with the conference. Although some of those expenses will go toward offsetting travel expenses for the new schools, a majority will be distributed to existing schools in the ACC. How those funds will be distributed remains crucial, as schools such as Florida State already have been vocal about their displeasure with the league’s current revenue-sharing model.

Conference realignment is a fickle beast, but this is likely the end of realignment moves for now, with Week 1 upon us.

College football fans reacted to the news on social media on Friday morning. Here are some of the best comments following the latest moves in conference realignment.

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