Teel: Crunching the numbers as SMU, Stanford and Cal join ACC (2024)

If only ACC officials had included Washington State and Oregon State in their recent expansion. Those schools would have added not only Pullman and Corvallis to the conference’s assortment of top-shelf college towns, but also 20 electoral votes to the league’s coffers.

And those votes would have put the ACC over the threshold needed to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The Electoral College

Ignited last summer, this latest round of realignment is the most volcanic we’ve experienced and places the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC in at least 10 states each. Here are the details.

ACC (18 schools in 12 states): Adding SMU and the Bay Area duo to the footprint puts the league in each of the nation’s five most-populous states — California, Texas, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania. But at 255 electoral votes, the ACC is 15 shy of winning the White House.

Big Ten (18 members in 14 states): Southern California, UCLA, Oregon and Washington arrive this summer, giving the conference 210 electoral votes.

SEC (16 schools in 12 states): Texas and Oklahoma bump the league to 160.

Big 12 (16 members, 10 states): Arizona State, Arizona, Utah and Colorado up the total to 137.

Directors’ Cup

The most staggering number associated with this summer’s change of addresses is Stanford’s streak of 48 consecutive years with at least one NCAA team championship. The Cardinal own a record 136 NCAA titles all-time and have won at least two in each of the past 10 academic years, including the pandemic-abbreviated 2019-20.

Those championships — women’s golf and men’s gymnastics were this year’s — have fueled Stanford’s extraordinary dominance of the Directors’ Cup all-sports standings. Since the competition began in 1993-94, the Cardinal have finished first 26 times and second the other four.

Stanford will also compound the ACC’s unsurpassed soccer chops. The Cardinal have won three NCAA women’s titles in the past 13 years and ran off three straight men’s championships from 2015-17.

Stanford joins ACC staples Virginia and North Carolina among the 10 schools that have placed top 30 in every Directors’ Cup, and if not for a No. 40 finish in the wonky 2020-21 COVID year, Cal also would be in that group.

The Golden Bears’ forte is men’s swimming, a sport in which no ACC team has ever placed first or second at the NCAA meet. They have finished top two at each of the past 14 NCAA championships — six titles and eight runner-up finishes — stunning consistency reminiscent of dynasties such as UCLA men’s basketball, Connecticut women’s basketball and North Carolina women’s soccer.

Meanwhile, courtesy of an 11-3 football season and Sweet 16 appearance in men’s soccer, SMU arrives fresh off its best Directors’ Cup finish, 54th, in 18 years.

Oil money

SMU also enters the ACC flush with cash after raising $159 million in 2023-24. Sure, the Mustangs are blessed to count oil barons among their alumni, but $159 million puts them in a league of their own.

Schools have yet to file their 2023-24 financial reports to the NCAA, but Sportico’s database of the previous year’s reports lends context to SMU’s fundraising.

Among public institutions that released their 2022-23 data after open records requests, Texas A&M raised a national-high of $115.4 million, followed by Texas ($86 million) and Clemson ($84.3).

Further highlighting the Mustangs’ haul are the schools’ approximate undergraduate enrollments: SMU 7,115, Texas A&M 60,700, Texas 42,400, Clemson 22,900.

The Mustangs collected $100 million during the week following their September invitation to the ACC, and given the compromises they made to gain admission, they’ll need every penny. SMU agreed to accept no conference television revenue for its first nine years of membership, a sacrifice of more than $30 million annually.

Raising $159 million is “a big number nationally,” SMU athletic director Rick Hart told the Dallas Morning News. “I think, also, for the ACC (it) demonstrated our commitment to competing and not just being happy that we’re in the league and waiting our turn until we get a full revenue share.”

Points aplenty

SMU is the lone Football Bowl Subdivision program that has averaged at least 35 points a game in each of the past five seasons, a span in which the Mustangs went 43-19, best of the dozen FBS schools in Texas.

The great unknown is whether their firepower translates from the American Athletic Conference to the ACC.

Three programs transitioned from the American to the Big 12 last year, and to be kind, it did not go well. Central Florida (3-6), Houston (2-7) and Cincinnati (1-8) combined to win six league games, and half of those were against one another.

Conversely, the Knights, Cougars and Bearcats posted a 17-7 conference aggregate as American lame ducks.

SMU forged an even better season in its American farewell, winning its first league championship since 1984 (Southwest Conference) and finishing No. 22 in the Associated Press poll, the Mustangs’ first end-of-season ranking since ’84.

Can SMU build upon its momentum? Will Stanford and Cal prolong their all-around excellence and revive their football programs?

Complete with mascots, dignitaries and live television, Monday’s festivities at SMU, upcoming sequels in the Bay Area, plus a digital billboard in Times Square, reflect the ACC’s bet that the answer is affirmative.