Is the ACC going to disintegrate?

All right, speaking of scrappy, when I think scrappy, I don't know. Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter, joins us on the Adam Gold show. You a baseball fan?

I am a baseball fan, a big baseball fan. Remember, who was, was it Phil Garner with scrap iron? Is that, do I have that nickname right? That's correct, yeah.

Bushy, bushy mustache, you don't have a bushy, they have a mustache, but it's sort of a full GI Joe thing going. All right, let's, a couple of things I want to get to. We have the ACC tournament in Greensboro, we're going to get to in a second. But I know you have been commenting on this and I have been amused by, I guess it was last week's Florida State meeting with the AD in front of the board of trustees and Florida State, oh, what's, can we get out of the, of the league? And that has triggered another wave of, well, the ACC is going to disintegrate. How overblown is that? Well, every time I think it's overblown, then I get a sense of like, oh man, there's another story about it. Oh, this is, you know, it's gonna happen.

Those are popular stories, so. Right, I mean, I think, and we talked, I know you've talked about it, I mean, I think the ACC is safe until 2030, 2033, you know, until people start to really look at that grant of rights. But the thing I can't get over is how the, up until six months ago, the big 12 was going to collapse. The big 12 was the league that was going to die. Now, all of a sudden people are saying Clemson and Florida State should join the big 12.

And I just scratched my head like, wait a second, four months ago, that league was dead. And they just took in UCF. You think Florida State is scrambling to get in a league with UCF?

Probably not. Here's the thing. Why would they leave for less money? The ACC disperses more revenue than the big 12.

Right, right. Less money and a league that's backed by ESPN. If you're going to be anywhere right now, you probably want to have the backing of either ESPN or Fox. I know the big 12 has deals with both of them, but they don't have full ownership of a league like they do, you know, with the ACC. Yeah, I've run these numbers time and again. You know, the big 12 made, we'll go back to the year before COVID because the COVID year kind of screws everything up. And we're about to get a new set of these tax numbers.

So we'll have updated numbers here pretty soon. But if you go back, you know, the big 10 was distributing about $35 million right at where the ACC was distributing. The difference is the ACC number is going up.

It's climbing every year. They just got the agreement with Comcast, you know, fully implemented. I think that's going to show up on next year's revenue. It's hard to, it's hard to do apples to oranges or apples to apples because, you know, the big 12 up until now didn't include their third tier rights in a lot of that stuff. You know, Texas was able to go sell that stuff. Oklahoma was able to go sell that on their own. You know, the number that the big 12 is touting is this 31.7 million.

That's what we're going to get moving forward. The ACC is at 27 million right now. And by the time that deal kicks in, it's going to be higher than that. Now, the problem is the big 10 is getting 75 million from their television contract moving forward. And that's why Florida State is complaining.

Right. The big 10, I think the number is going to be higher than that ultimately with the big 10, because the network's going to kick in a lot more money. And the SEC, they're both going to be right. I think they're both going to be closer to 100 million than they are to 75 million when it all shakes out.

I think the big 10 will be higher than the SEC. And what I fail to understand is we have done okay at, let's just say 30. We've done okay with 30. I understand these other neighborhoods are now they're building bigger, bigger walls with better gates and bigger pools. I get it. But I just, how can we not continue to be okay at 40 where they're probably headed? I'm at a loss for that. I realize that the whole thing is a race, but I'm just curious, can you find other revenue streams for the league?

Are there fourth tier rights? What do we do? Do we create a reality show? Well, this is what Jim Phillips is being paid, exactly what Jim Phillips is being paid to do.

I do think it's interesting. The big 12 commissioner and the big 12 is having a monster basketball season. And that's a good basketball league.

It is going to be a good basketball league. Even when Texas and Oklahoma leave has talked about de-bundling the basketball rights from the football rights and selling them separately. That's what you, at least if you go back, I've got 20 years worth of tax returns for the ACC. If you go back into the early part of the 2000s, they used to have a different number. They would report a number for their basketball rights and a number for their football rights. Over time, that just got encapsulated in one television rights number. We usually hear 80-20, 80% of your media rights is basketball and 20% is basketball. If you decouple them and sold them separately, and you were able to sell two Duke Carolina games plus the conference tournament, could you get more overall if you sold football and basketball separately? That's something I think the big 12 is going to try. I don't know if the ACC can do that, obviously, since all their rights are tied up through 2036. Yeah, and it's all tied up to ESPN.

They own everything and they're probably very happy with the split. Honestly, it's probably closer to 70-30 if you think about it for football and basketball for the ACC. Speaking of basketball, we're in Greensboro. We do not have a plan to come back to Greensboro.

I'm sure they will. I'm positive this league is never going to forget Greensboro, North Carolina. I've always said that this should be just a special occasion place, but your thoughts on one more year in Greensboro? Well, they have 15 million reasons to come back to Greensboro, at least twice in the next decade, because the state of North Carolina gave them $15 million to keep their headquarters in the state. As part of that, they've got to play four of the next 10 ACC basketball tournaments in North Carolina, and two of those have to be in Greensboro. Okay, there you go.

So, I mean, that's probably reasonable, right? Four out of the next 10 in North Carolina with two of them in Greensboro, maybe four of them in Greensboro? Nah, there will be two in Charlotte. Yeah, I assume there will be two in Charlotte. You know, I've thought about this question a lot, like, is there a place you can go and make the tournament special?

Is there a place you can go outside of Greensboro to make it more special? You know, I attended the 2016 event in Washington, D.C., and that was a big deal. I mean, there were lots of Carolina fans there, lots of Virginia fans, lots of Notre Dame fans, but I don't know if you can put it in the same... I just don't... Look, I grew up when you rolled the TV card in, you know, I'm totally aware, totally aware of that period of ACC basketball and what the tournament meant.

I don't know if you can get it back. I just don't know, no matter where you put the tournament, I don't know if you could ever get those feelings back. Well, the problem, Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter, is that the NCAA tournament is the only thing that really matters these days. And I'm not saying that in a negative way, it's just the way it's become. It's like in college football now, the only thing that matters is the national championship. Like, we no longer give a damn about the, you know, bowl games, we just don't. And that, in a way, that's our own fault. We have applied so much import, or put so much importance to the end, as opposed to what really used to be something spectacular. We have a lot more teams, it's not as much angst going into the ACC tournament, although this year maybe there will be a lot, because so many teams are unsure of what's next, that it's inevitable. The leagues are also, you've got 15 teams in a league, so we have, we need like nine days to play all these games out.

But the, so I get what you're saying here. To me, you know, we'll go to Greensboro a couple of times, but you mentioned Washington, and I was at that tournament, and I'm telling you that I think that was the first time since, oh, 8 or 09, that might have even been earlier, that might have been 05, that the ACC was back in DC. And I'm telling you, it was an eye-opener for the league at how great that setting was for the tournament, because if you remember, there were enough hotels right around, I think it was called Verizon Center at the time, I have no idea what it's called now, but it was right around the Chinatown area of Washington, DC. You're very close to the mall. There's an outdoor shopping mall at that, in that part of DC, so very, it's a cool entertainment district. They, it's like they stumbled into it, and I think there were so many eyes open to how good that city was, if they just went back and forth between Charlotte and DC for, and then took offshoots here and there every once in a while, I think that would be perfect. And we're not going to New York, we should, we shouldn't go to Brooklyn.

Brooklyn's, Brooklyn's not even in New York City. Yeah, two things. One, I think that ring culture that you're talking about is affected all sports, not just college sports. Right.

We don't care if the Dodgers win 106 games, did you win the pennant? That's all that matters. And I think Washington is great in part because there's a lot of Virginia fans, there's a lot of Notre Dame fans, there's a lot of Duke people up there, there's a lot of UNC people, there's a lot of people from the Northern schools. You get a diversity of interests that doesn't, you know, when it's in Greensboro, the big four is going to have to carry it attendance wise. And if Carolina's having a down year or they get booted out of the tournament early, that really hurts attendance.

There's seven or eight schools that can carry attendance if you put it in, if you put it in Washington DC. No question about it. And here's the, you've left out the best part, but I'm glad you did. So I get to say it. It's a thumb in the eye of Maryland for leaving the league, who bitched for years. We never get to, but, but, but now you left and now we might be there a lot.

Brian Murphy, WRAL sports investigative reporter. I love giving it to Maryland, man. It's my alma mater.

Blank them. I'll see you in Greensboro, man. Sounds good.

Thanks a lot. You got it. Brian Murphy. We didn't even talk about the gambling bill. It's been kind of quiet on the gambling bill.

Tell us how you really feel, Adam. About Maryland? Yeah. It was beautiful when we went up there right after they left. Yeah. How are you? How are you? I did get over and play the university's golf course though. That was cool.