The seeds for the move were planted when USC and UCLA accepted invitations in June 2022 to join the Big Ten next season. With a diminished Pac-12 unable to get a media rights deal with the revenue and distribution to satisfy many of the remaining schools, the conference started to break up this summer.
Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah left for the Big 12, with Oregon and Washington headed to the Big Ten. That left Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State as the only Pac-12 schools.
The Bay Area schools had more options because of their location and rich athletic traditions. Both schools felt the move to the ACC was the best financially and to allow the nonrevenue Olympic sports to compete at the top level of college athletics, which would have been difficult in a Pac-12 made up of the remaining four schools and other available additions.
“The athletes care deeply about being able to play at the highest level of competition and to play with like schools,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said. “This move guarantees or achieves those two goals. A reconstituted Pac-12, though there’s a lot of imaginative attractiveness about that, it’s also very uncertain about whether it would achieve those two goals.”
Stanford has won a record 134 NCAA championships — including at least one in 46 straight years — and produced 296 medals at the Summer Olympics. Cal is not far behind with 103 national championships and 223 Olympic medals.
The move doesn’t come without costs with increased travel in many sports and a reduction in revenue.
Cal and Stanford will receive a partial share of ACC Tier 1 media revenue for the next nine years before getting a full payment in the final three years of the conference’s deal with ESPN, according to a person familiar with the terms. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the ACC and the schools have not disclosed the finances.
Cal and Stanford will get a 30% share in the first seven years, followed by 70% and 75% the next years before getting the full amount, the person said. The schools will immediately get full shares of money from the ACC Network, the College Football Playoff, bowl games and NCAA men’s basketball tournament units.