Why Clemson is a top expansion candidate if SEC or Big Ten make another move
Another round of conference-busting realignment hit college football last week as Pac-12 flagships Southern Cal and UCLA announced their 2024 jump to the Big Ten.
And Clemson might be next in line for a major move, per national reports.
In the wake of the Big Ten’s splashy additions, CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd reported on Sunday there’s “a growing sentiment that some combination of (ACC schools) Clemson, Florida State and Miami could migrate to the SEC,” the league that shocked the college sports world last summer by adding Texas and Oklahoma for 2025.
The Action Network’s Brett McMurphy also pegged Clemson as a likely SEC target in a Tuesday report, while 247Sports’ Josh Pate reported on a Monday podcast that “there are conversations happening with folks at Clemson and folks in the Big Ten.”
“Everything that seemed impossible just a few years ago is now a possibility,” an industry source told McMurphy.
Clemson will not comment on the realignment reports, an athletics department spokesman told The State on Wednesday.
Despite being bound to the ACC by a grant of rights agreement running through 2035-36, the Tigers have become one of the country’s most eligible bachelors in a brave new world of realignment where money and prestige are taking precedence over geography and logistics.
That can mostly be attributed to Clemson’s emergence as a national football power under coach Dabo Swinney. The Tigers have appeared in six of the eight all-time College Football Playoffs, advanced to the national championship game four times and won two national titles, memorably defeating Alabama to end their 2016 and 2018 seasons on top.
They’ve also won 10 or more games in 11 consecutive seasons, the third longest streak in NCAA history, and won six of the ACC’s last seven football championship games. So, why leave?
The ACC, simply put, is lagging behind its fellow conferences in revenue distribution, a deficit that will only grow over the years and could prompt an exodus of teams.
According to numbers compiled by The Athletic, the ACC generated around $578 million in revenue during the 2020-21 fiscal year, a new league record, and paid out $36.1 million on average to each of its 15 member schools.
But that number paled in comparison to the Big Ten and the SEC, whose advantageous TV contracts with FOX and ESPN, respectively, continue to separate them from the pack of other Power Fives (the ACC, the Big 12 and the Pac-12).
In the 2020-21 fiscal year, the Big Ten generated around $680 million in revenue and distributed $46.1 million on average per member school, while the SEC generated around $777.8 million in revenue and distributed $54.6 million on average per member school.
The ACC’s 2020-21 earnings also came with a Catholic asterisk, as the temporary addition of Notre Dame as a full-time conference member brought its wildly popular football team (and wildly profitable NBC TV contract) into the fold for one year and increased revenue by 16%.
Each SEC school will get a $105.3 million annual payout and each Big Ten school a $94.5 million annual payout in 2029, according to estimations by the sports consulting firm Navigate. ACC member schools, meanwhile, were estimated with a $55.3 million annual payout in 2029.
As 247Sports’ Chris Hummer wrote: “Given the projected gap in annual revenue distribution, can Clemson really maintain its status as a contender when the schools it’s competing against from the SEC have a budget twice the size?”
Clemson was a charter member of the ACC when the league formed in 1953. Now, as the Tigers and other schools outside of the soon-to-be 16-team SEC and Big Ten behemoths feel more and more of a pull, their current conferences are scrambling for their own viability.
As first reported by CBS Sports, the Big 12 is in “deep discussions” to add up to six teams from the Pac-12 (already down Southern Cal and UCLA) and the ACC and Pac-12 are weighing a “loose partnership” that could include an annual “championship game” in Las Vegas and increase the value of their respective ESPN deals.
Notre Dame’s decision also looms large for the ACC, as adding the school would allow the conference to renegotiate its ESPN TV contract, per Sports Illustrated.
But the Fighting Irish are also being heavily courted by the Big Ten and cherish their longtime status as a college football independent. Their realignment decision could be definitive for other schools in limbo, Clemson included.
Wrote Dodd of CBS Sports: “Nothing happens until Notre Dame decides.”
This story was originally published July 6, 2022 at 1:21 PM.
