How long will the ACC survive?

Adding Cal, Stanford and SMU makes it no less of a mess

Photo credit: Write for California

The big bet now is that leagues don’t have to make sense. The idea is that you can put together any old bunch of schools that have very little in common, that don’t make any sense as members of any specialized group, that don’t share geography or culture, that occupy entirely different sporting spheres, and as long as they are all contracted together in a strictly legal sense, you can get enough TV money to keep everyone happy forever.

That is the bet the ACC appears poised to make. On Monday, Pete Thamel reported “continued momentum” in the halls of Atlantic Coast Conference power toward adding Stanford, Cal, and SMU to the league:

After a weekend of conversations, a source told ESPN that the details of the potential additions are "only in pencil," but it's trending in the direction of happening. One of four ACC schools that had previously objected to the additions -- Clemson, Florida State, NC State and North Carolina -- needed to change its vote, and that is expected to happen this week.

The meeting to decide was meant to happen Monday night, before it was canceled out of respect to the University of North Carolina, where a faculty member was shot and killed in a traumatic campus shooting event Monday afternoon. Were it not for this tragedy, it’s possible ACC commissioner Jim Phillips would have already secured the vote he needed to get the expansions to yes. As it stands, the meeting has not yet been rescheduled. Considering the way this situation has changed in the past few weeks, maybe this delay will eventually make a difference, but whenever the ACC presidents do reconvene it looks far more likely than not that they will vote to add Cal, Stanford, and SMU.

This seems like a really bad idea. I do not get it. I genuinely need someone to explain to me what the ACC is thinking here. Let’s try to figure it out.