ACC, Pac-12, Big Ten alliance is just ‘another day in 2021,’ Dabo Swinney says
Less than 24 hours after the ACC, Pac-12 and Big Ten announced the formation of an alliance, Clemson head football coach Dabo Swinney made an appearance on Packer and Durham on the ACC Network.
Swinney smiled and called the alliance “another day in 2021.”
“I have no idea,” he said when asked his thoughts about it. ‘It seems like a great thing. It sounds like, I guess it’s 41 teams. That’s a lot of people collaborating together for hopefully the good of college football. That, to me, is the big positive anytime you get a group of people like that that are communicating and collaborating together on critical factors that impact this game, impact the collegiate experience and so forth. So, other than that, it’s just kind of another day in 2021.”
The Alliance was first reported by The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach last week. The three conferences then released a press release with the announcement before holding a joint news conference on Tuesday afternoon.
The purpose of the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 coming together is for the conferences to collaborate in various issues affecting the college athletic experience, which includes the NCAA’s interim latest name, image and likeness policy, gender equity, social justice, postseason championships and future formats and more.
While there is no contractual agreement, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff called it “an agreement among three gentlemen and a commitment from 41 presidents and chancellors.” The alliance also has scheduling implications for football, women’s basketball, men’s basketball and Olympic sports at all 41 of the institutions. The Tigers’ football team, however, already has all four of their non-conference games booked for the next five years, three through 2028 and two games a year after that until 2037.
“We know that in the years ahead, our student-athletes, alumni and fans will benefit from thrilling new matchups, which will create new rivalries and excitement within our alliance,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “The ACC’s relationship with the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences runs deep in our frequent non-conference competition across many sports … From a longer-term perspective, we are bullish on the scheduling alliance as it will elevate the national profile of all of our teams by playing from coast to coast with college fans across the country as the beneficiaries.”
Added Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, “There still is a lot of goodness in college athletics … but, there’s turbulence right now in college athletics. The things that we need to address, we need to have strong leadership. We need to work together and I’m looking forward to having an opportunity to work with Jim and George and our respective leaders on our campuses and in our conferences to figure a lot of these issues out.”
This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 9:55 AM.
