What will the ACC look like this upcoming year, and years to come?

Blake's headed to the College World Series. Virginia is headed to the College World Series. This is the time of the year where, hey look, college baseball is fun. They hit a lot of home runs.

They do waste time bunting, but that's another story altogether. A gentleman I saw at Durham Bulls Athletic Park doing his share of ACC baseball, Wes Durham from the ACC Network, Reason the Conference Turns a Profit, is with us here on the Adam Gold Show. How are you my friend? I'm good. It's great to see you and Victoria.

You know I'm always obliged to anybody named Victoria when they call or say, hey it's good to see you, since I'm married to a Victoria. So anyway, it's great to be here. Hope you're well. I am.

I am well. Let me, I want to start with the, I guess, the most fresh news, which is that Jack Swarbrick is stepping down after, I guess, one more year at Notre Dame. Do you think there's, did you sense any frustration from Swarbrick based on the most recent ACC meetings in Amelia Island? I didn't because he wasn't there. Oh okay.

He was quoted though. Oh yeah, yeah, no question. Look, I think Notre Dame's in an interesting situation. The Pete Bavaqua hire last week as his successor is incredibly fascinating to me because if you read the trades, as we say in our industry, right, Notre Dame is seeking a pretty high tag for their football package from NBC, who already spent a pretty high tag to be part of the Big Ten package. And you could argue for as much as Fox got out of the Big Ten Notre Dame, NBC got the best part of the package, the Saturday Night.

The Saturday Night game, although it will not involve the major players late in the season. Yeah, I've heard that. I hear that. We'll see. You do sound skeptical about that. Let me ask you this. I mean, when push comes to shove and somebody puts something with a comma and zeros in front of it, everybody hears a price, right? I think wasn't that proven early last week, right?

Yes, it was. It was proven early last week. Yeah, when somebody didn't want to crack their books and everybody's in. So I'm okay with where Notre Dame is right now and I may be in the deep minority on this, Adam, but I'm kind of okay letting Notre Dame sort out Notre Dame and when they find that the market might not be what Notre Dame thinks the market is, as we've said before, we here at the Atlantic Coast Conference have open arms. But I think it's going to be really interesting for Notre Dame. I think it's going to be a very interesting 12 to 18 months. I'm not sure it's going to be as interesting as a lot of people want it to be on the other landscape of college athletics, but for Notre Dame, I think it's going to be a very interesting 12 to 18 months for sure.

So here's where I sensed some frustration. I don't have the direct quote in front of me, but I'm going to paraphrase Jack Swarbrick as the ACC athletic directors were meeting at Amelia Island where he seemed like he was hoping that somebody would step forward and save college sports from itself. Oh yeah, right now he is one of a handful of guys who wants the college sports nirvana to happen here. And in particular, he wants it to happen with NIL because his institution is not as proficient or as apt to go jump in that pool as others are. And so therefore, he would like some semblance of structure. Remember when we used to have structure?

Gartner. Yeah, no, I see. I'm again, I'm not with Jack Swarbrick on that. I think he was talking as much about the school movement and the way it was going in that regard than anything else. He was, and he was talking, if they couldn't understand him, he was talking to USC and UCLA. And Florida State. And Florida State, well yeah. And Florida State's in a really interesting situation, and you know what I'm talking about because Florida State is not as flush financially as they lead you to believe they might be.

And don't forget that whenever somebody says we really want something to happen and they never tell you what the consequences of not happening will be, it's because they don't know what those consequences are. And I'm not saying that's the case with Florida State. I'm saying that's the case with anybody who pops off and says, well, X institution wants to go to this league. Well, X institution may in fact have a percentage of people that want to go to that league, as you know, but does that league want to accept X institution and cut their pie another slice, right? And really what the situation here is who's going to be accepting of institutions and who's going to have enough revenue to cut that pie for everybody's comfort level.

And see, nobody wants to talk about that part of this, and that's a fascinating part to me because really the back end is far more important than the front end. I mean, we can all talk about, you know, it's fun to sit on a whiteboard. I mean, I could draw it up on the wall here in my house and say, hey, I really want somebody to go to this league and I think it'd be a great fit and we could get down to 64 Callum schools, right? And just have our own league. But then you got to find somebody to finance that league.

Well, I can find somebody. I mean, it can't just be all golf for the public investment fund, Wes. No, it cannot. No, it cannot because in you and I follow enough of the premier league to know the PIF is already well involved in the premier league. Congratulations, by the way, to your hammers.

Thank you. We want to come Europe. Hey, Europe, there's nothing wrong with winning Europa conference. I like the NIT. That's what I told somebody the other day.

I said, we kind of won the NIT. It's more CVI, but that's fine. Really? You're going to throw your rope is the NIT.

It's not the FAA. It's not your way for I get it. Thank you.

That's the CVI. You really going to do that to me? Are you? Okay. I apologize. It's not the CIT then. Is there one less than that? I don't know.

I say to me, the CIT and the CVI are the same. All right. Let me ask you one question before we get to more college athletics. Are you going to be in Kenan stadium? I'm going to figure out a way to be in Kenan. I waited too long and you can't get tickets now for Chelsea and Rexham.

Yes. I'm, I'm hopeful, hopefully going to be a working member of the press. That is my plan to be a working member of the press. I'll be severely disappointed if you're not in attendance at Chelsea. I just went to the soccer tournament that was here for four days. I heard it was all unbelievable setting. Unbelievable. That's great. Yeah. By the way, the, uh, everybody who I've talked to in the area is just like, is Ryan Wendell's going to be there?

Rob McElhenney? I have no idea. People. I don't know. I think they probably would have, uh, flown in, had Rexham been in the title game. Yeah. Yeah, probably. But I also think there's a chance.

I think they're in Chapel Hill too. I think there's a chance. Why not?

Why not? That's an, I'll tell you what, that's an amazing sports story. It's an amazing sports story. Uh, yeah. We move on. Well, yes. Let's, let's, let's leave the, uh, the football conversation to another time.

Um, we're just about, I just want to get back to the, the, the Notre Dame part of this. Because when you name a TV executive as your athletic director. Correct. I mean, that shows you what they're, what they're, I mean, they could have just used him as a consultant. They didn't need to make him the AD. But he's a Notre Dame guy. That's true. That's true.

But again, but he doesn't have experience in, in college administration, right? I'm not sure that's a premium importance right now. Okay. So your, your thoughts on that? Pat Fordy just wrote a really interesting story at si.com, but I know you've had Pat on your show. Absolutely.

That's great. And he is terrific. And he just wrote about the, if you take Gary Barta at Iowa, who's retiring Jack Swarbrick at Notre Dame, who's retiring out of the mix, the average FBS AD tenure right now is 4.5 years. That's the average of the FBS, not power five FBS. You have to understand the culture right now is revenue generation in division one.

I would say all of us have in division one. I would say all of division one, but certainly an FBS revenue generation has to be at the top of the top of the deal. Um, Pete is a guy who can come in and talk about your media package and certainly do that, but he can also help you with your apparel deal.

Don't forget, I think will be, will be consulted with Swarbrick and member Jack was an attorney when he became DAD. Um, I think that Notre Dame understands how critical the next, again, 12 to 18 months is going to be in their athletic lifeblood because I do believe it's going to be critical for Notre Dame because I think they're going to find out some things that are really good, but I also think they're going to find out some things that are tough to probably live with in their world. It's only a six game package for NBC. They want a lot of money for it coach. Yeah, that's, uh, that's remember what NBC just paid to stream a wildcard game.

That is a hundred percent. By the way, the six game package, is all of that going to be on NBC? No, some they'll put at least one game on Peacock.

One or two on USA. That's right. Um, you alluded to this about Florida state.

Yes. So sometimes your desire to be elsewhere is not met by elsewhere's desire to have you there. And I think there are a lot of schools that you remember this 10, 15 years ago, there were a lot of schools that were talking about going places and there were different commissioners in the landscape of college athletics at that time. I also think that's what bore out this grant of rights that all of a sudden a lot of people are fed up with, but which at the time it was written and announced was hailed as the savior of, you know, modern college athletics.

And so I think you have to be careful how vocal you are at times. There's a lot of reasons. Hey, it's the old Augusta national theory, right?

What's the worst thing you can do about a guy? If you want to be a member of Augusta national, what's the worst thing you can do? Adam talk about it. Tell somebody you want to be a member of Augusta. Well, that is true. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I'm absolutely don't want to be a member of Augusta national.

Uh, so what, what golf courses, what, what golf courses behind ironically, that is Augusta national. Look at that. That is the, um, that's the program.

It's, it's blown up. That's the, uh, program that the, uh, spectators patrons, as it were, patrons, yes. We're given the third year of the tournament existed. Very nice. By the way, if you're watching, uh, on, uh, on TV, there's a, there's a map of Augusta national behind over his, as you're looking at the camera, at the camera screen, uh, to his right shoulder. Yeah.

Um, so anyway, I would say this, I, Florida state, certainly. I don't think Michael offered said anything. I don't think their new president has said anything that the fan base and they're not the only one. I mean, there are a lot of schools across the country that, you know, like a change of addresses in order for them.

Um, but I think you have to be careful because where you're going, there's going to be a cost to it. And where are you in terms of your financials before you go ask for that slice of the pie to be cut because, you know, people that want to leave tomorrow are walking off on what, 13 years of. Well, yeah, they can't do it. Nobody can do it.

Nobody can do it now. So I know people have floated well, if the entire league dissolves like that's going to happen. Yeah. The breaking news of Louisville being the seventh school that Amelia Allen's one of my favorite tweets. The how many ACC schools, if they could declare free agency, how many ACC schools would find wealthy landing spots in either the SCC or the big 10 of the 14 that play football in the league? Half maybe you think six. I think the number is closer to two. Well, you're saying Florida state and Clemson.

Nope. Are you saying Miami Clemson? Um, um, I think Clemson might, I don't know that there is an appetite for the SCC to add Clemson. They're so good that they might just, I think Carolina would absolutely be attractive to either the SCC or the big 10. I think Clemson, we all know, we all know a dozen years ago about Carolina and Georgia tech in the big and Virginia, maybe, maybe not. But I also think that if the big 10 was going to make a move for North Carolina, I would be absolutely flabbergasted. If Duke wasn't involved in that, just the brand. No, I look, I think the ACC, and this is the one thing that people have lost sight over in the last couple of years when the ACC went to 13, right? When they went to 13 teams, I remember having a conversation with an athletic director who said, don't forget that the Atlantic coast conference now has more metropolitan television markets than any other league in the country.

Sure. That was really important at the time, but see the, the pivot on this has been interesting because the pivot now is about financials and some of the pivot to financials is about resources. The other pivot on the financials is for income in some ways to stay in the game because it then goes back to, and this is an unfortunate piece of this. It then goes back to a massive failure of leadership on behalf of the organization that all everybody is a member of. Well, yes, there's no leadership there.

Let me, let me just, let me point this to you as well, because you and I have had this conversation in a variety of different ways for a long, long time. And I think it's interesting because it is the kind of thing that fuels June and July in college athletics. Has anybody thought that maybe we need to look at the bigger organization before we worry about the silos of the other conferences? And the answer to that is no. And the reason being is because that bigger organization is governed by presidents, chancellors, chief executive officers. It's not governed by athletic directors and commissioners.

So therefore it's a much more complicated process. It's just like, I think you and I had to talk about, you know, I've always laughed at the sec fan that says, well, we just throw Vanderbilt out of the league. No, you won't. You're not going to throw Vanderbilt out of the league because the president at whatever other school in the sec, let's take Auburn's president. I have no idea who it is. It used to be a guy named Jay Gooch. It may still be the chancellor.

I have no idea. He's not going to look across the table and tell the Auburn president you're out. We're going to cut you a check and you'll see the lady at the door and she'll validate your parking and you guys are done. That's not going to happen, A.G. No, no way. These chief executive officers, presidents and chancellors are not going to send the other cat packing.

That's not the collegiate way. So therefore, the bigger organization, in my opinion, has to be solved before you dive into the silos. But everybody has so much fun whiteboarding the silos. They never get to the bigger conversation because the silos and we're talking about the silos of the conferences. They're fun.

They're the fun. We did it. We did a draft. We did a realignment. No, no.

This is like 15 years ago. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. I had a great I had a great a great league. All right. Before before we say goodbye to Wes Durham, voice of the ACC, what is going to be I give you like 30 seconds.

Give me an answer here. What is going to be our topic of discussion five weeks from now, six weeks from kickoff at the ACC Kickoff. Is Florida State for real?

That'll be OK. Yeah. And number two will be I can tell you Clemson supposed to be good. I can tell you Florida State supposed to be good. But who else is there with them?

Can you give me a 13 schedules really hard? Yeah. But when when Duke wins the opener at home against Clemson, I'm going to say this. That is a really interesting game. Mm hmm. So is Georgia Tech Louisville on Friday night in Atlanta.

Two first year head coaches. Yeah. Wow. It's fun and games, man.

That's why it carries us through June. That's why you call me and say, hey, can you be on the show? Just come on.

Just talk to me. And if I if I have a need for that and you're not playing golf, I'll do that again. But more than likely, I will see you in Charlotte in about six weeks. Highly recommend Path Lit by Lightning by David Marinus. Oh, show that book again. The biography of Jim. Oh, OK.

Path Lit by Lightning. All right. The Western Book Club. Yeah. Fantastic.

And my quest to make birdies and and and Victoria, the biggest upset of this segment is A.G. did not talk about our online golf tips that we often share with one another. Oh, no. Stroke Savers by Strata.

Stroke Savers by Strata. Unbelievable. Yeah. Left handed guy.

We follow the left handed guy for some reason. I'm going to laugh now for two hours. Yes, you are. Appreciate it, man. Take care, brother. You're the best. See you soon.