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The Atlantic Coast Conference announced what commissioner Jim Phillips called a “groundbreaking alliance” with the Big Ten and Pac-12 on Tuesday. It was supported unanimously by the presidents, chancellors and athletic directors of all 41 schools, according to a press release.

“From a longer term perspective, we are bullish on the scheduling alliance as it will elevate the national profile of all our teams by playing from coast to coast with college fans across the country as the beneficiaries,” Phillips said during Tuesday’s press conference.

The three conference commissioners, all of whom are relatively new to their respective positions, have been discussing the future merger for the past month. Their decision to form an alliance comes after Texas and Oklahoma announced they would be leaving the Big 12 to join the SEC by 2025.

“What that did is that allowed all of us in college athletics to maybe take a step back, and take a step forward to really start evaluating what will the next one, three, five, seven (and) 10 years look like in college athletics,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said.

Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said the foundation of college sports is “in many respects, in turmoil.” He cited Texas’ decision to move conferences, in addition to state and federal legislation regarding name, image and likeness, the NCAA’s gender equity review report, College Football Playoff expansion and conference realignment as reasons for this.

The past three months have created a “volatile environment,” and this alliance was about stabilizing that, Phillips said.

When asked about how the alliance would affect scheduling, Warren said that the three conferences promised one another that they wouldn’t interfere with existing contractual agreements.

“This is about honoring those existing contracts but also building relationships between these three like-minded conferences,” Warren said. “Not only in football, but in women’s and men’s basketball and also in Olympic sports.”

Syracuse football has scheduling contracts with nine different schools reaching as far as 2037. The Orange are scheduled to play Army for four consecutive years, starting in 2023; they have a 2025 Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game against Tennessee and six games against Notre Dame starting in 2022, among others.

There’s no intention of increasing the number of football games or stopping teams from scheduling games with conferences outside the alliance either, Kliavkoff said. The goal is to create new rivalries and more excitement for fans. Currently, it’ll include scheduling components for football and men’s and women’s basketball, though the conferences want to “continue to explore opportunities” for Olympic sports, Kliavkoff said.

Both Kliavkoff and Warren were said they were in favor of the proposed College Football Playoff expansion, which would increase the field from four teams to 12, though they said that they were still doing their homework on the matter. The ACC has not made a final decision about where it falls, Phillips said.

“We want to take the whole entire period in order to really vet it thoroughly,” he said. The board’s next meeting will be in September.

The three commissioners revealed that there is no signed document regarding this alliance — only an agreement among three men and commitments from 41 schools. Kliavkoff said that there doesn’t need to be a signed contract.

“If there’s any lack of specificity … it’s because we wanted to make sure we can deliver 100% of what we promised,” Kliavkoff said.

Now, the responsibility falls on a group of 11 athletic directors, who represent all three conferences, as well as members of the 41 schools, to carry out the alliance, Phillips said. The emphasis was always on taking advantage of the opportunities and not on the revenue that it might generate, he said.

“As far as the execution of it moving forward, it begins now, it begins today,” Phillips said.

Published on August 24, 2021 at 4:58 pm

Contact Roshan: rferna04@syr.edu | @Roshan_f16