It doesn’t take a geography major to know that Berkeley and Palo Alto aren’t on the Atlantic Coast. Yet, Cal and Stanford will be migrating to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) for 2024, as both schools were voted in on Friday along with SMU.
Fitting with the theme of college sports’ drastic realignment over the past few years, the ACC is now an 18-school conference that features universities in three time zones.
The new-look ACC will also include Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Notre Dame, Pitt, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.
This all but signals the end of the Pac-12 Conference, as Cal and Stanford joined eight other schools in leaving for other conferences. Just Oregon State and Washington State are left looking for new homes, as USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon are headed to the Big 10, while Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah will join the Big 12.
Travel is the biggest concern for Cal and Stanford as they join a conference with schools spread across the Eastern seaboard. But there is one creative option being looked at, as longtime Pac-12 reporter Jon Wilner reported the schools are considering using Dallas as a middle ground for sporting events to mitigate costs.
While football teams generally play six road games a year and could probably handle more expensive flights, the Dallas proposal could be cost-efficient for the smaller sports who play dozens of road contests each season. On the flipside, moving to a neutral site will severely impact attendance and interested fans, as friends and family would have to travel to the middle of the country for a Cal-Miami matchup.
It seems like this entire situation remains in flux, but we’re clearly about to enter a new era of college athletics in 2024.