How the Atlantic Coast Conference Could Rebrand Due to Conference Realignment: ACC Daily

Now that conference realignment for college football has been in effect for at least a full season, it is about time to start thinking about some ways that conferences like the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the Big Ten, and the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), which have all adopted new teams in the past year, could go about making changes which would better reflect the nature of the conference’s identity.

For the ACC, a name change could be one of those changes.

Heading into the 2024 season, the ACC adopted three new members—Southern Methodist (SMU), California Berkeley (Cal), and Stanford—increasing the total number of member programs in the ACC from its original slate of 14 to 17.

However, SMU, Cal, and Stanford all have one thing in common that the remainder of the ACC’s member schools do not. SMU, Cal, and Stanford are not located on the Atlantic Coast. Not even close to the Atlantic Coast, for that matter.

To some, changing the name of the ACC to a different title which reflects the conference’s program locations comes off melodramatically. To others, however, it is ludicrous that the ACC could still possess its current title with two teams from California and one from Texas being full-time conference members now.

Conference realignment was bound to create chaos in some capacity, but for the college football traditionalists out there, this is not just chaos—it is anarchy, and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips should be responsible to address the issue immediately.

It might not be as tangled as the Big Ten’s dilemma—the Big Ten does not actually have ten schools in the conference, like its name would suggest. But there must be a title which could more accurately describe the new identity of the ACC and its 17 member institutions.

So with that being said, here is a list of names that the conference could adopt due to conference realignment:

All-Coast Conference (ACC)

Atlantic & Pacific Conference (APC)

Transcontinental Athletic Conference (TAC)

Coast-to-Coast Conference (CCC)

East-West Athletic Conference (EWAC)

While this is probably one of the last things on Phillips' mind currently—due to the emergence of revenue sharing and the current legal battle between the ACC, Florida State, and Clemson over distribution disputes—there should be some consideration over this topic for the sake of inclusivity.

The ACC will not be the only conference to take this into account, either. For instance, the Big Ten, which was composed of teams primarily from the upper-mid to mid-east region of the United States, now includes Southern California (USC), California Los Angeles (UCLA), Oregon, and Washington.