Confirming your comments, below is a
SB Nation article basically discussing the earlier pronouncement by UNC about their effort to find a new home. It also likely gives a more realistic schedule when any realignment may actually happen.
See my excerpts below and the SB article linked at bottom. I picked a few paragraphs of interest, but the full article is a good read.
There were a handful of stories published last week about the Tar Heels and the one that got the most attention was
a report from Inside Carolina, the incredibly plugged-in and well-sourced 247sports site that covers the Tar Heels, which said that, according to sources, “the SEC is where the Tar Heels are aiming.”
And this report was aggregated from sea-to-shining-sea and served as fodder for a flurry of podcasts and sports radio shows. On one of those shows, there was even speculation about a “handshake” deal between UNC and the SEC, and Virginia and the Big Ten. And that just continued to fuel the aggregation machine as talking season continues in college football.
But, with all due respect to the folks at Inside Carolina, this is not really news.
Of course North Carolina is positioning itself to be picked up by the SEC, one of the two richest conferences currently competing in college athletics. People with real power at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have said as much on the record. One of them is Dave Boliek, a former member of the UNC Board of Trustees who was elected as State Auditor last year. Before he took office and when he was still serving on the BoT,
Boliek was saying things like this:
“We can’t sit back and cross our fingers and pray for pennies from heaven and thinking everything is going to ‘work out.’ We have to actively pursue what’s in the best interests of Carolina athletics… I am advocating for (UNC to join a higher revenue league). That’s what we need to do. We need to do everything we can to get there. Or the alternative is the ACC is going to have to reconstruct itself. I think all options are on the table.”
We also know that while Clemson and Florida State were suing the ACC to wriggle out of what we once thought was an ironclad grant of rights, North Carolina was quietly exploring an exit plan. According to a report from the Athletic in February, the Tar Heels spent more than $600,000 in legal fees on “Carolina Blue Matter” — a code name for UNC’s behind-closed-doors exploration of conference realignment. Work on that project began not long after Texas and Oklahoma announced they were moving to the SEC.
“We have a landing spot if things blow up,”
former trustee Chuck Duckett wrote to chairman John Preyer in an email obtained by the Athletic.
“Let FSU and Clemson pay the attorneys and see what happens. We all learn via their expense.”
So, Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina aren’t leaving the ACC anytime relatively soon. But in 2030? Sure, we should be on conference realignment watch.
But that’s five years away. And consider how much the landscape of college sports has changed in the last five years. In 2020, the transfer portal was relatively new, we weren’t really talking about NIL or the House Settlement, and conference realignment hadn’t fully taken off. The Pac-12 was still alive and seemingly thriving, the Red River rivalry was still in the Big 12, and the College Football Playoff was only four teams. Women’s college basketball was on the cusp of really taking off but the NCAA still wasn’t sharing the March Madness branding and ESPN still wasn’t airing every game of the women’s tournament on its linear channels. Five years ago, we didn’t have games streaming on Peacock or Paramount+ or HBO Max. Since 2020, watching habits have changed. Is the TV money going to be the same in 2030?
A lot can change between now and 2030. What will college sports look like then? And will the UNC Tar Heels be willing to drive a nail in the ACC’s coffin?
www.sbnation.com
