ACC spring meetings will spotlight all things financial and postseason expansion

ACC and member school administrators have gathered this week in Amelia Island, Fla. to tackle all the hot button issues in college sports.

All 18 ACC school mascots, in a rare joint appearance, on the court at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte before the start of the 2025 ACC Tournament. | Brad Bierman, The Juice Online - On SI

May is a month of meetings, and more meetings, when it comes to the Power 4 football conferences and the other Group of Six FBS leagues.

Those sessions are underway this week with the ACC's annual gathering at the posh Ritz-Carlton on Florida's "First Coast", with plenty of discussion to center around expansion of the College Football Playoff and NCAA Tournament, and the overall financial state of college athletics, and its trickle-down effect to the league and member institutions.

A Syracuse contingent of administrators and coaches is expected, in a year of transition with John Wildhack's pending summer retirement, and Bryan Blair already forming his senior team to tackle the agenda items sure to come up this week.

Maximizing the number of ACC schools that participate in the CFP and NCAA Tournament

This past season, in a 12-team CFP and 68-team field in the NCAA Tourney, the ACC had one and eight teams, respectively, participating for national titles.

If the CFP were to expand to 16 or 24 teams as has been speculated, and with the NCAA Tourney now a go next season for a 76 team field it would figure the ACC numbers, assuming there are teams that finish with qualifying seasons, would expand to at least three for a 16 team CFP and at least four for a 24 team field, and to 10 for the NCAAT.

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips has continuously lobbied for postseason expansion, the league playing catch-up financially with media rights payouts compared to the Big Ten and SEC. The coaches want access. Fran Brown came tantalizingly close to CFP discussion in 2024 before last year's back-step, and Gerry McNamara has set the minimum standard he expects in just two seasons at Siena.

What would be the spring meetings without discussion of the conference revenue distribution models, which have shifted to performance-based and high game broadcast viewership numbers, something that comes with the access of playing in big-time regular season matchups and playing in meaningful postseason games.

Learning more about the exclusive "Duke Deal"

You need a brand, and you seed a suitor. Duke has both in its basketball legacy from Vic Bubas to Mike Krzyzewski, to now John Scheyer.

The Blue Devils consistently play deep into March, have a strong global name brand despite just a 9,314 seat homecourt, and are just the team Amazon's Prime Video wants to spotlight in a three-game series of non-league games against big-names, at neutral sites this upcoming season.

No doubt the other ACC schools are going to want to unearth details this week about this first-of-its-kind arrangement, which included behind-the-scenes negotiations with Duke, the ACC, ESPN, and Prime Video (and its sponsor partners), and involves trading future inventory (TV programming) of Duke game broadcasts to benefit ESPN, the league's longtime media rights holder.

As we asked, would you as a member of Orange Nation pay an extra fee to a streaming provider this upcoming season to watch an exclusive three-game series of Syracuse non-ACC games against, let's say, Indiana, Providence and St. John's?

That is essentially what Duke is asking of its fans. If you do not have Prime Video and want to watch games against UConn, Michigan, and Gonzaga, you will have to find someplace that does have access.

It will be interesting path to follow the Duke exclusive game model, and see if other ACC programs will be able to eventually follow suit.

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