Are ACC teams legally allowed to leave the conference?

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Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. It's National Backup Sports Radio Host Week and I'm the president of the Backup Sports Radio Host Union.

We are strong and it's a big week for us. Well it's interesting because when Adam Gold is not here on his own show and backups are in, usually things happen. So things have happened. I think maybe, I can't remember if I was filling in for Adam Gold when something big happened. I know he was gone when the Canes won the Stanley Cup, Game 7, he was on his honeymoon. But a couple other times he's been out for a summer break when either there was maybe a seismic move in the ACC or a big retirement.

He's missed a couple things. So that had me worried because, as is the buzz, poolside, we're not at the water coolers because it's summer, when you're taking your kids out to the pool at like 5 o'clock, 5.30, when it's still 97 degrees outside. Goodness.

And you're like chatting it up with the dudes and the moms. Moms care about the potential demise of the ACC. Yeah they do. Yes, people are talking about, wait a minute, what's going to happen? I hear people saying UNC to the Big Ten or the SEC and who would go with them? Would it be Duke or Virginia? And I don't hear NC State being mentioned in that. Well we have evidence we'll bring up later about NC State.

Dropping. But no, so it is interesting times and it's all the discussion. Now naturally these things happen during the summer, right? No one's going to announce a conference realignment. I mean sometimes it's happened. But nobody's going to, nobody wants to announce conference realignment and be put in the awkward situation of like, we've got a game Saturday with somebody that we just knifed in the back and we're leaving town on, right?

Like people would rather do that when people aren't around. And a lot of the conversation in today's show is going to be about the very real potential of the demise of the ACC. Now whether that is short term or long term is a bigger discussion.

But right now the future doesn't look good. And one of the things we, a theme of yesterday's show was that in all the other rounds of conference realignment, going back, way back in the day, not that the ACC has never lost a member like a Maryland or a South Carolina, but that they have almost always been on the hunter side of conference realignment and not the hunted side, right? There may be bigger hunters, there may be hunters that got out to hunt before them in some cases, but the biggest showdown of all was when they knew they were not in a position of strength in terms of numbers and watching what was happening with other leagues. And there was very real potential that the Big East, if they became the hunter before the ACC, the ACC might become the hunted. That's what led to us getting a lot of Big East teams as part of the new ACC. If not all, like most of the teams we got were from the Big East, right? But that was a move, whether you liked it, whether you loved the teams that were picked, a lot of things shook out because of the way they did.

Some of them were political in the certain states, especially when you come to university, state public controlled schools. But however it shook out, the guarantee was at the time the ACC was the hunter and not the hunted. And in all the conversations recently, it sounds a lot more like there's only two hunters left in the game. The Big Ten backed by Fox and the SEC backed by ESPN. Obviously ESPN backed by ABC, Disney, you can go bigger up the corporation chain, however you want to do it. Probably at the end of the day, they're both probably owned by the same two people.

We all know that three people own everything. It feels like there's only two hunters left in the game and that leaves for the real possibility that the ACC is among the hunted right now. And that's why you're hearing a lot of it is conjecture because people are saying, UNC fans are saying, I'd rather go to the SEC or I'd rather go to the Big Ten or I'd rather be with Virginia or I'd rather be Duke. And whether or not that's a real possibility in the next year or two years or five years as opposed to ten years, it is a more real possibility now than it ever has been that I can remember. Are we going full Hunger Games on this basically? Is that what we are?

I would admit, can we get a supply drop from a sponsor? If we did the show like 10 or 15 years ago, I would know every pop culture reference. Hunger Games are big enough, I should know it. Somebody can go with somebody's tribute and you can put three fingers up in the air like a salute. Come on, come on, come on, I'm on this.

Yes, the three fingers, the symbol of the alliance, the Big Ten, the ACC and the Pac-12. But how'd that help? Look, I got the Hunger Games down pat. So it feels like a scary time, especially if, as everyone listening now, not on a stream somewhere internationally, most of you listening are in the state of North Carolina.

We were talking about this before the show. The Charlotte Hornets came and left and came back to North Carolina in my sports lifetime. So I've known life without the Charlotte Hornets. The Carolina Panthers didn't exist for the first, I used to say half my life, now it's about a third of my life, for the first third of my life. But much of my sports developed fan years, those early teen years when you're becoming a sports fan. So I knew life without the Panthers and I knew what it was to consume the NFL. I enjoy having the Panthers just like I enjoy having the Hornets.

I don't want to lose those. But my sports life wouldn't be totally altered because I've seen it happen in other places and I get that we don't have an anchor city, a top five city in America and North Carolina. So it's always a little bit of a small market deal. Same with the Carolina Hurricanes. I spent about half my life without the Carolina Hurricanes and for a little more than half my life we've had them here.

I would be devastated if we lost them. But again, it always feels like we've kind of been gifted an NHL team that we don't deserve anyway kind of in rally. I'm not knocking anybody and all the hard work that people have made to make the canes the entity that they are. They truly are a part of rally and I have a theory about if you exist past 25 years and you get into like a second generation fan too much like I'm talking about. There are a lot of people now adults making money and you can buy season tickets who do not remember life without the Carolina Hurricanes.

So for them this would be a little bit of a different deal. But it would be along the lines and same thing with Panthers fans in Charlotte's. If you're like under 30 then what I'm about to describe applies to you for the Hurricanes or the Panthers or maybe the Hornets even though the Hornets kind of like moved in the middle there.

But for me growing up my entire life living here consuming sports. It's personal for me that that ACC is like the number one thing like if you're in if you're an NFL fan, you may be paying more attention to Panthers, but if you're my age or older or even a little bit younger, even if the ACC College basketball college football isn't your number one sport. You've always existed in a world where the ACC was in your state in your newspaper dominating your sports page. It's a little bit different in Charlotte, but even still you're not fully removed from that because the AC tournament is going there like it has been the talk of your sports life consistently.

If it wasn't always number one, it was always there right? Yeah, and there's now this very real possibility that again, I think you're moving a little quickly. If you think Oklahoma, Texas happened last year UCLA USC happened last week and now tomorrow. I'm going to be Carolina Duke to the Big Ten, but you know hypothetically whatever I I'm not convinced that's going to happen but program director Sammy put it best when he's like if you heard that right now if the news broke during today's show or why Adam Gold is on vacation, which is how it always happens then you're that you know Duke and Virginia UNC.

Let's take them all UNC, Duke, Virginia and Miami are all going to the Big Ten or whatever it is. You would be it would shake you to your core, but you wouldn't be surprised at this point. Yeah, like that is a real possibility. I don't think that's a likely scenario for the short term.

I'm going to repeat that and we're going to talk to people smarter than I am. Who I think will back me up on that but may not right. I think the ACC and the grant of rights they have in place buys them a little more time. The question is, the longer term is the ACC actually surviving entity, and that's crazy to think about. Because the unknown of like could you end up in a league where the four big four ACC schools in North Carolina aren't in the same conference. They're in two or three different conferences. It's it's insane to think about one of the reasons North Carolina and then followed by Virginia are the two most populous states that currently don't have either a Big Ten or an SEC school in them.

Right? Yeah, so I don't even know what order the biggest states are but you can population but you can think of them Texas, California and California just got added to the Big Ten, right? New York, Pennsylvania. Illinois is probably high up there, right?

So all these states Florida, Michigan. Yeah, all these states belong to somewhere in the SEC of the Big Ten currently North Carolina and Virginia do not and that's why after Notre Dame, which is currently the biggest chip still out there in the conference realign the world and obviously a chip that is shown that they're not all too interested to move. They're a heavy chip, you know, they're like a big stone.

You're not going to really move them quickly. The next biggest chips become the biggest schools in the states of North Carolina and Virginia and possibly good partners for those schools. The intro that I'm going to get to the news here in a second as we get out the gate, but over now, we're going to get out of the game. We're going to get out of 11 minutes after the but it's just weird vibes at a time where again, I don't think it's going to happen this week, but it could but it's definitely looking like the end in sight for the potential ACC or at least a shift as we know it and that and that could be part of the games like are they waiting out for a total change in college football that maybe allows the rest of the conferences to stay more traditionally intact.

We'll see and again. We'll ask chip Patterson and David Glenn to good friends of mine who also know a lot more about this stuff than I do questions all along those lines. Adam Golden studio with my friend coach Pete DeRuta with the Capitol Financial Advisory Group. We are talking retirement coach. How does longevity risk figure into our retirement and income plan? This is the best of times and the worst of times Adam longevity risk means we're going to live too long, but to me every day I live is not too long, right?

Absolutely. So we want to money to outlive us and unfortunately many people have seen you out there listening. Maybe one of them your money is not designed to outlive you you might outlive your money and that's not what we want to have happen because when we get to that day after you run out of money, it's not going to be a fun time. So let's design a plan that guarantees you'll never run out of money. We call it the GPI plan growth protection lifetime income for the next 10 people. This is a golden ticket. Adam thousand-dollar value going to do it at no cost or obligation and all you have to do is call we make it so easy.

Would you like financial independence into your retirement and beyond it? 800-661-7383 that golden ticket is a $1,000 value or you could text Adam to 2 1 0 0 0 for coach Pete DeRuta. Let's jump out the gate and give some actual news and audio and context to these conversations. Let's do it. So that is the news conference realignment carousel is spinning the news that came out yesterday during our show is here's how it basically sits the power five didn't agree to a new deal for the college football playoff, right? And that sent things to the next step which was the next round of conference realignment, Oklahoma, Texas gets sucked in by ESPN and the SEC, UCLA and USC gets sucked in by Fox and the Big Ten. The other three left are the big 12 the Pac 12 the ACC the ACC's grant of rights.

Just make it buys them some time at the very least. We're going to hear talk more about it, but just trust me and it makes it very very very hard for somebody to bolt for the ACC. Even if you're like, why wouldn't Clemson go the SEC? They're just making so much money. Just trust me.

There's a lot more to it than that. So what it leaves is the ACC in a distant position, but more safe relatively than the Big 12 the Pac 12. And so now the Big 12 the Pac 12 are just fighting over each other and the report yesterday was that the Big 12 is trying to bring in at least four schools, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, who you know, 10 years ago left the Big 12 and Utah, which has become a particular power player in football. They won the Pac 12 last year. By the way, can we start calling them the Pac 10 now again? Can we start recalling them the Pac 10? Anybody who starts a new conference forget numbers, right? I mean numbers just throw them out the window.

It's stupid at this point. The other two schools that they would potentially want and have talked to are Washington and Oregon. That's basically like all the big prizes left in the Pac 12. The Pac 12 means the other report that one came from Dennis Doud of CBS.

We'll talk to Chip if he sees that actually happening. The other report was the Pac 12 trying to make it a don't call it an alliance. Let's just call it an agreement with the ACC to maybe do some scheduling stuff and maybe a championship at the end of the year between the two champions. I'm not sure how that would necessarily work in the big picture of a college football playoff, but whatever.

Are they gonna do like a Sirius and XM radio how they used to be separate and just merge them together? Can we call it like just the Coastal? Or call it about the Pacac?

Yes, the PACACC, the Pacac or the ACPAC. What everybody's really trying to do is beautify themselves for their next TV deal. The big 10 right now is negotiating theirs with Fox and Fox is basically telling them, well, you know, what would be a lot more attractive to us if you go get the UCLA and USC. They're like done. We'll make that happen. And the Pac 12 just announced yesterday that everybody knew that their old deal was about to expire and they were going to renegotiate. They announced yesterday that they're renegotiating their media deal as of right now, partly as a desperate ploy to like get a number on the table of what they can get to their schools. And again, try and add some, you know, quasi relationship with the ACC for bigger games, I guess like this drop. Maybe everybody's gonna have to drop a fluff game and instead of adding a ninth conference game, it means everybody will play a Pac 12 team every year.

Well, I don't know, whatever it is. So UNC will play Cal. Basically what we said we were going to do with the alliance with the big 10, the big 10 totally was like, no, no, no, no. As you predicted, that was not worth the paper it was printed on and it wasn't even printed on paper. It was an email. That's how worthless it was. It wasn't even printed on paper and it wasn't worth the paper.

It wasn't even a paper trail. So the ACC weak, but not as weak right now as the Pac 12 and the big 12. The big 10 probably doesn't want any more of those schools or they would have taken them already.

That's kind of what people are looking at in that one. I don't know if the Pac 12, I haven't seen any reports of the Pac 12 making offers to big 12 schools to try and bring them over, but basically everybody's trying to lock down their position. And again, the ACC has theirs a little bit more tightly locked down for right now. So yeah, the four main schools potentially that would go from the Pac 12 to the big 12, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah, and then the next two, Washington and Oregon.

And yeah, I don't know. I mean, obviously I throw conference tradition out the window in these decisions at this point. Seems like nobody cares. Again, Colorado just flipped 10 years ago, so it would be fine to just flip right back. And once you've seen UCLA and USC jump ship, I mean, you've got to be thinking about survival mode.

So we'll wait to see if any official word happens with that or if the Pac 12 makes some statement of strength and talks about reaching a deal with the network, which is also going to be tougher now because I don't think Fox is going to bid that hard on the Pac 12 programming because they got the teams they want out of there to their big 10 deal. So next up, getting out the gate. Oh, yeah, we're talking NBA Summer League. What?

That's right. And Brian Geisinger isn't even in here. We do not need Brendan Whitted to talk Summer League when it comes to Chet Holmgren.

Now, a couple things. Chet Holmgren, I'm not going to play NBA scout, OK? I can't tell you whether he's great or not, right? Paolo Bancaro went number one. Did Chet go number two to Oklahoma City? Some people thought he should be the number one overall pick. I think there's a lot of people who like covered Gonzaga and covered college basketball heavy and they're like, he should be number one.

I'm like, that's fine. Can we be real about this? The knock on Chet Holmgren is that he's like white and kind of goofy looking.

Am I wrong? And he went to Gonzaga, which people are kind of like, and rightfully so. They play in a week conference and everybody talks about him and they don't win titles and they're still really good. And Brian Geisinger will get mad when we say that.

But the average fan dismisses Gonzaga and they dismiss a tall, skinny white dude, right? You've got to watch him play. Like he's not going to every night put up, what was it?

23 points on nine shots, seven boards, six blocks, four assists. And he looks sharp. People also, the haters were out there replying with video. There was like his highlight package and people were like, oh, you about people were replying when he was going head to head with Kofi Coburn of Illinois, who was kind of like, you know, drop stepping into it and drop steps the wrong word, but like taking a dribble and like putting a shoulder into him and basically muscling his way into the basket pretty effortlessly. And it was like, yeah, there's also this Chet Holmgren.

So that's true. He is going to put on weight, but you can see like his shooting stroke is a legit one. He's not just like, you know, there's a lot of big men that you hear like, oh, and he's added a three point shot this year. And then they come out and they take their first three point and you're like, oh, I'm going to need to see some more of this. I mean, you are taking three point shots, right?

Doesn't mean you're making that. His three point stroke looks legitimate and natural. He looks very legitimate and natural dribbling the ball. I mean, one time he took, he blocked a guy like a fadeaway and then immediately put it behind his back in a dribble because the guy that shot he blocks was on that left side and went behind the back dribble to the right side and a nice dish. I mean, he is very good. We don't know how good, but after the game, he was asked about particularly the blocked shots.

Yes, he does protect your back. A new summer league record for blocks. We talked about your competitive spirit. Only six. That's a record. Oh, well, I'm coming to break it again.

So, OK, tomorrow, there's always tomorrow. Coming to break it again. Yeah. Get you some set in summer league records. But yeah, so record six blocks. And yeah, it was impressive.

Twenty three points on nine shots is incredibly efficient. We'll see again. And I know I know it's summer league, but it was fun. It was fun to watch. Well, I don't even know what the summer league schedule is. I should pay attention to it.

I'm sure Palob and Carol will get his chance to shine sometime soon. But I do think it's fine to be skeptical of anybody, even if they're drafted number one, two or three. Everybody makes their own evaluation, watch people play, makes picks just because you didn't think she had home Chet Holmgren should have been in the number one pick or the number two pick or whatever. I don't think that makes you a hater. I do think there were some people that were out particularly strong with their hatership and there were haters that were drawn out who had no clue anything about his game.

But the fact that he was tall, white, goofy looking made him a little bit more hated. Vegas Summer League starts tomorrow. First game, Houston, Orlando. That game is 10 o'clock Eastern on ESPN.

So you can watch Bankero. Didn't Orlando have a big draft pick too? I feel like they've got somebody big too.

I can't remember who it is. Yeah, they've got Bankero. I was thinking Houston. Didn't Houston have a high draft pick too? I think so. I can't remember. Yes, Bankero will be playing tomorrow.

Sounds like in Vegas. Next up, Max Scherzer back last night. That's right, we're talking baseball, Dennis Cox.

Because that's how I roll. But honestly, I don't even want to talk to Max Scherzer. Classic Mets. Scherzer had, I believe it was 11 strikeouts and six shutout innings or something like that. And the Mets lost. I was looking for an upset baseball pick to take because all baseball games are basically coin flip. And so I was looking for one that had like just good value and I settled on the Royals Astros, which didn't hit because I almost went with, who beat them? The Reds, I think it was. Somebody terrible beat the Mets.

And I almost went with them, but I was like, nah, I don't want to be betting against Max Scherzer. Because even more important than his victorious, his non-victorious, but great stat start for the Mets. Even better than that was the news that he was a champ in the minor league rehab start.

Yeah, I did see this. While he was at AA, let's see, where was he? At the Birmingham, at the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, excuse me. That's a great minor league name.

Fantastic name. He spent over $7,000 on a steak and lobster dinner for the clubhouse and then he just bought headphones for everybody. AirPods. I forget what the kids call them these days. The headphones without wires. The wireless headphones. The AirPods. See, I don't like calling them AirPods because aren't those Apple specific?

Yeah. I'm a team android so I don't use AirPods. So to me they're headphones.

I'm not branding them. Whatever brand they might have been, they're Bluetooth headphones. Wireless. Earbud. Not wireless earbuds.

Not AirPods. Max Scherzer. I can't remember the guy's name.

When they were Braves affiliate, somebody came through there that was a pretty big draft pick and he did something of similar nature. At least paid for a bunch of food. I think he bought shoes for everybody of some sort.

Always a cool thing to see somebody do. But always made me think too because you go and you look and it's like oh he spent $7,000 on that. 25 dudes. 200 bucks for a pair of AirPods.

What's that? Another $5,000? Whatever it is, when you put it against the percentage of what Max Scherzer makes, it's extremely small. It comes down to you and I have paid 100 bucks for some kids on a baseball team that had nothing to get them 100 bucks for something they didn't have. That'd be the equivalent. You're getting a popsicle kid. That's what you're getting. Maybe you buy them a Bojangles tailgate special or something.

That's the equivalent on our salary. But that always intrigued me. Back in the day, I used to think of it as a letter writing campaign. Now I guess we could email or DM.

There's enough on social media. You hit up every NBA player, every NFL player, and every Major League Baseball player and you said hey man, hit me up with like 100 bucks. You literally wouldn't notice it. It is less than a thousandth of a percentage of your wealth. Maybe even like a 10,000. 100 bucks?

That is nothing. That is below pennies to you, multi-millionaire or in some cases billionaire. Just throw me 100 bucks and if you could get a couple hundred of them to respond and be like you know he's right. Let me just send that guy 100 bucks. Here's my Venmo. You can make a quick buck.

You'd have to account for postage or time lost or whatever. I feel like some people would pick you up. Now the equivalent nowadays is you hit somebody up and you put your Venmo in there and you're like hey man, I'm not poor, I'm not homeless, but you can help me out by throwing me 50 bucks and you wouldn't even notice it.

What you got? And see who throws you 50 or 500 bucks. I know we got a break here, but I do remember it was a few years ago at college game day, a young guy threw up his Venmo saying like I need beer money or whatever it was on a sign and some people just started Venmo-ing him like here's 5 bucks. He made thousands of dollars. I mean props to that guy.

He's a little proactive. Yeah, you got to be honest about it. Hey man, you know, maybe say like I'm trying to throw a bigger wedding than I can afford and I'm just hitting every NBA star and MLB star and NHL star I know on Instagram seeing if I can get 5 or 10 bucks. Somebody might just give you 500 bucks. You never know.

See how much you can make on that. Just fishing. June 19th, 2006, but it all started May 6th, 1997 with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina.

It's a story of transition of heartbreak of figuring it out on the fly. The Canes Corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move presented by the Aluminum Company of North Carolina. Listen now find Canes 25th anniversary wherever you get your podcast. We're about to talk to my friend David Glenn. He was the longtime owner and editor of the ACC Sports Journal. He was a longtime host of The David Glenn Show ran for about two decades statewide here in North Carolina. He was a two-time North Carolina sports broadcaster of the year. The first radio host ever to win that award is mostly TV folks before that and he covered the ACC since its inception in 1953. He now teaches sports media at UNC Wilmington as a contributor at Chapelboro.com and a TV and radio guests on radio shows regionally and nationally. I told him he could just get the clips of him being a guest kick back to him put that together in a podcast and it'd be good stuff.

He's like I'd rather teach the next generation how to do it. He's my good friend David Glenn. What's going on, man? Aloha, my friend and thanks for the Jimmy Buffett on the way in. I appreciate it. I'd also tried to give you a David Glenn worthy introduction, although I didn't mention your Twitter handle, which is at David Glenn show. My bad for that one.

I did not put it on the dock there. My bad. All good. Happy to join you anytime on any matter, my friend. I sat with you and watch text roll in as I don't know Louisville joined the ACC or Maryland was leaving. I watched you break the news either on air or on Twitter or other places as the media has evolved of where you break news. So you were one of the first people I thought of when it looks like the ACC at least as the rumors go has moved from being the hunted of the Hunter to the hunted as far as potentially losing members instead of adding them before we get into the grant of rights because I'm going to ask you to put on your lawyer hat to talk some about that.

I'm not saying you can't mention grant of rights in your answer, but just know there's another cut question coming about that. Let me just ask you generally, what is the ACC thinking right now as they see Oklahoma and Texas moved the SEC and UCLA and USC moved to the Big Ten? Well, it's both nervous out on the one hand, but it believes that it is in a better place than either the Pac-12 or the Big 12 while completely accepting that it is nowhere near the financial stratosphere of the Big Ten and the SEC. And we all know that follow the money is a smart phrase in a lot of contexts, including college athletics. The reality, Hayes, is that in realignment and expansion, you do have to find schools that bring more to the table than they take away from the table as an extra mouth to feed. And about a year ago, there were only a couple of juggernauts in the Big 12.

And guess what? The SEC saw that value and now the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners are headed to the SEC. UCLA and Southern Cal are two of the gems of the Pac-12, you know, again, a league falling behind the monsters that are the Big Ten and the SEC.

Sure enough, the Big Ten saw that value. USC and UCLA needed a more financially lucrative landing point, so they are on the move. What the ACC hopes is that there aren't many more schools that can add value to the SEC or the Big Ten. And the short list of that schools includes Notre Dame, Clemson, UNC, and maybe others, all of which have either a long-term relationship with the ACC or the funky one that the Fighting Irish have had. So they're anxious because a decade ago, Maryland officials were swearing to them eyeball to eyeball, we're not leaving.

And that is not a play on words. They were literally all in the same room one decade ago with Maryland representatives swearing to their fellow ACC members, we're not leaving. And as it turned out, they were secretly negotiating with the Big Ten to leave.

That actually happened that way. Not an exaggeration. So you hope that your longtime members especially can appreciate that money is not everything, and even a smaller financial gap doesn't doom you to Never Never Land. But as we've learned many, many times, when those financial gaps get too big, obviously a school like a Clemson or a Carolina or a Notre Dame is going to have to listen and going to have to run these numbers by their university presidents, who are the ones who ultimately make these decisions. We're talking with David Glenn about the current climate of conference realignment and specifically how it affects the ACC.

Alright, now I do want to ask specifically about the grant of rights. One reason why the ACC can feel a little bit safer, it's not about that they trust everybody, look at each other in the eyeball to eyeball, sitting in the room necessarily. Although hopefully, again, you'd like to hope we live in a world where at least that kind of trust means something, but backing up that trust is this grant of rights that at least through 2036, in all the articles I see, and I'm not knocking people doing their job, right now this is the talk, if you're a college football or even a college basketball writer, unless you cover recruiting, there's nothing else happening, so this is the only story to talk about.

So you're going to talk about every potential rumor, right, and that's why Carolina fans are seeing their name in there, NC State fans are getting nervous about not seeing their name in there, right, specific to where we are. So you're seeing all of it, and I'm not knocking anybody who's discussing those things, but in there I'll see one sentence about, well the ACC does have this thorny grant of rights, and they allude that it is difficult, but I feel like maybe it deserves a paragraph, or an article about how thorny this grant of rights is. Explain to us, in better terms than I can, what the grant of rights is and why it does make the ACC feel like they have at least time to work with and that people aren't going to be exiting the door this summer, as some may think. Yeah, the starting point for this, Hayes, is that if you want to leave a major conference for a new conference, different conference, there are two penalties you're looking at. One is an exit fee. You may remember a decade ago, Maryland was facing an exit fee of $50 million or so, 5-0, $50 million or so, but they saw so much more money in the Big Ten that whatever they ended up paying in a settlement that was somewhat lesser than that, it was still worth it for them to pay this huge tens of millions of dollars penalty because they were going to make so much more on an annual basis as members of the Big Ten, which did turn out to be true. In the ACC's case, there is a second penalty, and as long as it holds up in the legal system and the courts, it is an enormous penalty. If you leave, you are essentially giving the value of your multimedia athletic rights, even as you're a member of this other league, whatever it is. The money that your athletics department receives for your athletics teams on TV and streamed and all the rest still goes back to the ACC, again, as long as this holds up in court.

Now, think about this. Let's just pick a number. Let's say you make $30 million or pick a number in that range, $30 million a year for your athletics media rights. And that's a conservative number. If you play this out all the way through the end of the grant of rights, which is 2036, as you said, that's 14 years. Do the math, 30 million times 14 years, that is hundreds of millions of dollars.

That's a pretty big penalty. Now, will it hold up in court? You know, I'd have to charge you $1,000 an hour if we don't have enough time to get into all that. But that's, I can guarantee you, everybody's calling their lawyers right now. And this is why, Hayes, as you and I have talked over the years, I thought this day was coming late this decade. Because if you think of it logically, let's say it's 2030, the year 2030. Well, then there's only six more years to run on that grant of rights, right?

So your penalty is way lower. And by that point, your benefit is way bigger to join the Big Ten or the SEC. I really thought this was coming five to seven years down the road. But these debates are happening instead in the year 2022.

And at this moment, I'm not sure which way it's going to go. David Glenn joining us talking about potential for conference realignment. Yeah, you said it perfectly of like, obviously, in 2030, both the penalty looks as bad and you might say, we'll roll the dice that in court, we can even get that reduced anymore. And at that point, if you follow the current projection models, you'd be looking at what, you know, you would be making in the SEC or the Big Ten at that point and seeing even bigger numbers of a gap than you are right now. So yes, it becomes a more tempting proposition in either of those ways. So that being said, I'm drawing two things out of your answer of one, much like I tried to introduce the show saying I don't feel like this is something that's happening now the grant of rights buys the ACC at least a little time, you'd have to be real frisky to jump right now and challenge that like you mentioned the hundred million dollar penalty, but time seems to be the only thing that the ACC has on its side is, is right now the is it either add Notre Dame or risk becoming totally irrelevant or I guess my other scenario is, could the ACC bide its time and almost hope that this whatever it's discussed, I've heard it, you know, almost like an AFL NFL type thing between the Big Ten and the SEC, basically hope that there becomes this new branch of football, and that it's not worth wrecking your conference to do it and maybe some of your current conference football members ended up playing in that league and you got to figure that all out, but that it's that hopefully you can convince everybody that it's not worth moving because everything else our basketball league works great and all these non revenue sports we win championships in their worth keeping together right now, you know, is, is that a possible scenario the ACC has enough time to buy a college football, you know, Super League crop up however it might.

Yeah, I think there's a possibility that a tweak the version of what we have right now. It still is what we see for the next handful of years and what I mean by that is the ACC did not just recently fall behind financially. There are a lot of reasons, 20 years ago let me put it this way 20 years ago, the Atlantic Coast Conference was the wealthiest league in America. So the per school payout each year was larger for ACC schools, even that it was for Big Ten schools and SEC schools.

Fast forward 20 years gradually. The SEC in the Big Ten, in part because they have successful football programs, in part because they created the Big Ten network and the SEC network, long before the ACC got around to creating the ACC network. This gap. First they leapfrog the ACC and now the gap keeps growing and growing and growing. What you sometimes hear from ACC officials Hayes is being like, you know, being right now it's roughly $20 million a year, picture, picture the Big Ten and SEC schools getting annual checks from their conference offices of about 55 million a year per school picture the ACC schools getting about 35 million per year per school. And that's just your shared revenue obviously you make more athletics money individually as a university that you don't have to share.

Sure. Some ACC officials say well, you've already been this sort of second tier league financially for more than a decade. Right, we've still won six of the last 13 men's basketball national championships, right, little old ACC is winning it almost half the time.

Clemson has still won national titles, plural, and competed for others under Dabo Sweeney in the mega juggernaut sport football, Jimbo Fisher led Florida State to a national title that's not ancient history. So there is a financial gap that can be sustained, even if it's significant, where your schools are still winning lacrosse national titles to include an Olympic style sport, but also football and men's basketball national titles. What is the threshold at which the financial gap gets so large that you just can't pay your coaches you can't upgrade your facilities you can't have the same recruiting budgets and all that stuff catches up to you competitively. I bring all that up because I don't think right now, those 20 million a year gaps scare the ACC. It's the, it's the forecast down the road where each Big Ten and SEC school is getting in the neighborhood of 100 million. And by then, maybe ACC schools are projected to get 50 or 60 million a year.

Can you really keep up with the Joneses, when they're making, you know, literally at that point twice as much money per year, and the gap is 50 million a year instead of 20 million per school. I don't have all those answers but that's why I believe a tweaked version of our current reality is not an impossibility, and I mean do recruits really know the difference between like gold plated locker rooms and like diamond studded like locker rooms. You can make that locker room $50 million more expensive but it ain't going to look any shinier to the 18 year old there already thinks it's the coolest thing he's ever seen, you know, if you find the right coach, you can win at a larger level than what the resources justify the ACC unfortunately as the world has just evolved into a football driven universe. Remember, some estimate 80% of TV revenue is football related 19% men's basketball and 1% all other sports combined. So, you know, it's, it's, it's part of the ACC fabric that it has been the trailblazer in men's basketball and some other sports.

And it's never really been the king of the hill in football. And we just evolved into this world where football pays a lot more bills than than the other sports do and that's bad for the ACC David Glenn making us all feel a little bit better about any reports of the instant demise of the ACC I wasn't quite sure about that, but I do like to hear that even as this grant of rights becomes less of a barrier to leaving there still are some reasons to be hopeful that that the ACC would endure just in in a admitted lower tier sort of money and football compared to the big 10 and the SEC are going to be rolling out. Appreciate your time as always friend always like taking topics I'm interested in, and then getting people who are smarter than I am to converse with them about so I appreciate your time, because I know you are vacationing with family as well. It was great to see you recently great to see the lovely and talented Maria, please give her and your kids my best, and thank you again for the time I'm in. Appreciate you my friend keep up the great work. This is the Adam gold show. It's May 19 2006, but it all started May 6 1997 with the announcement that the Hartford Whalers were coming to North Carolina, it's a story of transition of heartbreak of figuring it out on the fly, the canes corner look at the 25th anniversary of the move, presented by the aluminum company of North Carolina. You can find James 25th anniversary, wherever you get your podcast.