ACC announces additions of Stanford, Cal, & SMU
On Friday morning, the ACC officially announced the additions of Stanford, Cal, & SMU to their conference. With Stanford and Cal joining the ACC, that leaves Oregon State and Washington State as the only two Pac-12 schools without a conference for the 2024-25 season and beyond.
Via GoStanford.com-Stanford to join the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2024
For quotes from Stanford, Cal, and SMU along with the ACC, do read the press releases above. Too many quotes for me to slap into one article, so I will bypass that part of it. The skinny is Stanford & Cal are thrilled to have a new home while SMU is pumped to be getting upgraded to a power five conference. As for the ACC, they say they’re excited to be expanding their brand by adding three strong athletic and academic institutions.
Ok, so what does this mean for Stanford? Well, the first thing has already been said. They have a home. In a power conference. They can breathe. And the same is true for Cal. It took longer than they would have liked, I was hearing they were thinking this might not get officially announced until next weekend, but it happened this weekend. Now they can focus squarely on their final season in the Pac-12. What a relief it is for them.
The second thing is it means that Stanford will remain with Cal. The two Bay Area programs that are global academic powerhouses behaved like best friends and not bitter rivals throughout this process. They were in lockstep the whole way and did everything they could to make sure they stayed together. This of course means Big Game continues along with every other Stanford-Cal rivalry game. That’s great for both universities.
The third thing this means for Stanford is they’re going to travel a lot more. I’ll have more on that in the coming days about what it could mean for different sports and/or I might just do an entire piece that tries to make sense of what the travel is going to look like, but the bottom line is they along with Cal are going to be traveling a lot more. SMU is kind of in a weird spot travel-wise. The Carolina schools and Florida schools aren’t too far, but they too will be logging in some long flights.
The fourth thing this means for Stanford is their relationship with Notre Dame just got even stronger. Notre Dame President Father John I. Jenkins did all he could to will this into existence, strengthening the relationship that Notre Dame has with all three incoming schools. Especially Stanford since they have such a rich history and rivalry with them as well.
Finally, Stanford has a home! This needs to be repeated twice. They have a home! Cardinal fans can breathe. Golden Bear fans across the bay in Berkeley can breathe. Mustang fans, they can rejoice for joining a power conference. While this process has been stressful and crazy with lots of twists and turns, Stanford and Cal both got about as good of an outcome as they could have hoped for. Lots of other challenges lie ahead with respect to making the logistics work, but that’s a problem they’d much rather be discussing. Happy problems never felt so good.
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