Clemson Football: ACC expansion is somehow still a thing

According to a post by The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach, there is still a serious chance that Stanford, California, and SMU could end up in the Atlantic Coast Conference with Clemson Football.

Per Auerbach, a group of conference presidents met to discuss the situation on Wednesday. There will be further meetings this coming week that will involve more leaders, including athletic directors.

It looks like Stanford and California are willing to take reduced payouts to join the conference, at least for a certain period. SMU appears willing to take no payouts for the first few years they join the conference, though no timetables were presented.

ESPN would still pay the ACC a full share for each of the three new members. Since only a portion of that money would be sent to Stanford and California, it means more revenue for the rest of the members of the conference.

The addition of the new schools was opposed by Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina, and North Carolina state. That left only eleven members (including Notre Dame) in favor of expansion, and twelve positive votes were needed.

Clemson Football, Florida State, UNC or NC State would have to change their vote for expansion to move forward

It seemed like expansion was dead, but since the schools in favor of it only needed to flip one vote, they continued to pursue the initiative.

There is no information yet on whether the school presidents that are continuing to discuss expansion believe they will be able to convince one or more of the schools who are not in favor to change their mind.

It is possible that those in favor of expansion may try to sway at least one negative vote their direction by using the extra television revenue from the addition of the three schools to improve performance incentives for the highest profile members, namely Clemson and Florida State.