Stanford and Cal are expected to take reduced television revenue shares, while SMU will earn no television revenue from the league for approximately nine years.
No TV revenue for 9 years?! So SMU is taking a ~$7m loss each year leaving the AAC for the ACC for 9 years? That’s wild
There are a few EXTREMELY rich families of donors, including the Hunt family that owns the Chiefs and FC Dallas, who have just promised to float the program and fund NIL at competitive levels, but I do not envy their athletic department staff. They’re going to be begging, borrowing, and stealing for the better part of a decade to keep up appearances, and if the football team doesn’t make some noise, the culture could get pretty toxic in University Park. They also have 30+ years of alumni who picked SMU despite sports not mattering and 30+ years of locals who found something else to care about.
TCU is constantly on a razor’s edge for general interest, even with 20 years of being an excellent G5 and respectable P5 program. It’s just such a crowded market. Winning will fix a lot of things, but winning at any sustained or impressive level been the missing part of the SMU equation so far.
Sounds like it’s a hedge against FSU, Clemson, and UNC defecting. Makes it harder to invoke the rumored renegotiation clause in the TV deal, or to get the votes to dissolve the conference altogether (which I maintain would be WAY messier than a simple majority vote, even if such a vote is the key part of the process).
As a fan of a B12 team, I’m still feeling pretty sanguine about being part of a “power 4”, but this does up the odds of the ACC surviving in a reduced but largely intact form. Kudos to them for being less stupid than the PAC.