Plan on leaving the ACC? Well, it’s going to cost you.
The new trend in college athletics has seemed to be conference switching. We have seen some conferences take on a completely different look with the arrival and departure of new teams, or even dissolve entirely. For those that love college sports’ conference rivalries and all that they stand for, each new announcement of a team leaving one conference for another has been a harder pill to swallow. The new-look ACC has come up with a grant of media rights agreement that should put an end to colleges within its conference from jumping ship for years to come.
Yesterday, the ACC’s 15-member council of presidents agreed to a new media rights agreement that states that any school that leaves the conference would forfeit its television revenue through the 2026-27 academic year. With the ACC’s television rights deal with ESPN that would be more than $20 million per year.
Duke Basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski described the ACC’s grant of rights announcement as “one of the great days in the history of our conference.”
“It shows the highest level of commitment – not by words, but by actions. With all the uncertainty regarding conference affiliations the past several years in college athletics, this announcement, coupled with our media rights deal with (ESPN), secures the ACC’s future, and thus Duke’s, for years to come.”
The ACC, which loss Maryland to the Big 10, will welcome new members Syracuse and Pittsburgh in July, and Louisville and Notre Dame (in all sports except football) by 2014.
This is great news for college sports fans, as other conferences like the Big 10, Big 12, and Pac 12 have established similar agreements. Since the money is why conference jumping started, hopefully the threat of taking it away will end it.