I find the article difficult to read due to the way it's written. Basically, the writer is saying Va Tech will be on the outside looking in after 2030 GoR is over with ESPN. Only mentions the Big 12 in passing. It automatically assumes 4 ACC teams will depart for the Big10 or SEC.
The End of the ACC?
As we pick up the final few of these “The End” articles, we need to talk about the ACC conference and where things look like they are headed as the series proposed target date of 2030 approaches. Remember the ACC/ESPN Grant of Rights (GoR) owns and controls the conference. College football is now, for better or worse, a money driven enterprise and media contracts and the proceeds from them are now the driving force in everything that is done from now on. The ACC’s Grant of Rights agreement with its member programs and ESPN (the ACC Network) was parsimonious in its financial distributions, and odious in its penalties for withdrawal. We went over the details of the standing GoR last Summer.As the conferences reorganize into actual professional sports leagues, and the SEC and B1G (formerly Big 10) aggregate into two super, high dollar leagues, the ACC was falling farther behind in revenues. It is also being threatened by being frozen out of any sort of rational consideration for end of season playoffs as new tournament invitational rules take effect.
An Educated Guess
It’s become obvious that the “Super 2 League” (SEC and B1G Plus Notre Dame) are rapidly shaping the 12 team “championship” into an invitational tournament, not a playoff of champions. The obvious intent is to freeze out all other conferences for the final run at the “National Championship Trophy” (aka BIG Cash Money).Well, along rolls the two programs in the ACC who stand the best chances of being absorbed into one of the Super 2’s major divisions. Florida State and Clemson are big name programs with national attention and prior championship chops. ACC, Clemson, and Florida State Settle Litigation - Atlantic Coast Conference FSU has fallen on some hard bumpy times, but its fanbase and revenues promise Super 2 audience share. The same goes for Clemson. Neither team relishes the idea of hanging around the obviously 2nd/3rd Tier ACC
Along with those two programs North Carolina is looking to upgrade its football image and get into a league with a better basketball profile. The ACC’s premium men’s basketball exposure is down to a few teams and UNC is looking to get out to improve its customary annual March Madness seeding. The other ACC Florida team, Miami, is also showing signs of restlessness with the league deal as its coaching changes have finally seemingly produced a competitive football program and its men’s basketball team is on the rise. In all four cases, the programs’ Name, Image, and Likeness monetary remunerations are beginning to swamp the remainder of the conference’s abilities to keep up.
With the terms of the settlement being announced, the reality that by 2030 at least three or four teams will arrive at a GOR release fee low enough for them to hit the bricks. ACC-FSU-Clemson Settlement to Cut Exit Fees to $75 Million The amount might seem like a whole lot, but for programs seeking to compete at the Super 2 level, $75 million is doable. I doubt that the ACC starts the 2031 season in its present configuration, and who knows, the name might even finally change.
The end result is that by 2030 or so, the ACC will have lost their largest revenue producing programs with the largest rated telecast audiences.
Prediction: FSU will go to the B1G (Florda won’t have them in the SEC). Clemson will head for the SEC, with South Carolina kicking and screaming. Notre Dame (still part of the ACC for non-football sports) will probably return to the B1G orbit since the ACC will never generate enough revenue to entice their program to fully join the conference.
The end result will be the Super 2 Divisions dominating college football and therefore all other revenue producing sports in the college orbit. Essentially that turns the Super 2 into a professional league which will require the application of existing professional sports federal regulations to the league.
Where Does Virginia Tech Fit into All of This?
We need a few hits from the reality oxygen tank, first, before wandering into the minefield.
Reality #1: Money. Virginia Tech does not have enough money and current revenue opportunities to operate in a Super 2 environment. That’s not a guess or a prediction for the future it’s merely a statement of what is right now. Tech’s athletic department is strapped for cash. (That may have been helped by Metallica, but the lesson passed on.)
Reality #2: Professionalization. Or better yet, the desire for the school to have the athletic department participate in or avoid a professionalized operation. Whether the fanbase agrees or not, the administration of the University (President, Faculty, and Board of Visitors), and the Athletic Department (President, BoV, and Official Boosters) might or might not want the teams to participate in professional or professionalized sports. That’s another paper and the subject of debates that really should be public, but for now there is currently little in the way of public debate going on.
Reality #3: Staff, facilities, Business Management, and Public Relations. Virginia Tech’s Athletic Department is understaffed for a professionalized operation, at all levels. The facilities seem new, but they are Cassell and Lane are very old facilities and not large enough to provide the required gate receipts for base operations. To keep up, the football stadium needs to seat over 80,000, and the Indoor Field House over 15,000. Tech’s Athletic Business Model looks largely centered on “old style” college athletics and is not pointed or operated as a profit-making venture with comprehensive business, revenue generating options, and consistent modernization plans.
The Big Decision
Virginia Tech’s future athletic program success is largely dependent upon the decisions taken by the combination of University and Athletic Department entities. Some of those people are the same, and many are on the marginal periphery. The boosters (at least the official boosters and donors) are not directly responsible or fiduciaries, but their contributions have weight in the decisions being taken off of the options on the table.The Options
So, what are the options involved in this big decision? At a simple level it’s a binary choice, isn’t it? Tech either chooses to professionalize or it decides to stay a quasi-amateur lower tier operation. But within those two choices, there are several crucial factors that will make the decisions difficult in either direction.Choosing the Super 2
Tech would have to put some serious thought into choosing to fish for a spot in the Super 2 League structure. The program would more likely opt for the B1G over the SEC because the academics would demand association with the much more prestigious academics of the programs in the B1G. The current university president is driving hard for an AAU membership and being an SEC program is perceived to negatively impact that application.In addition to finding a conference/Division of the Super 2 to join, there would need to be major changes to the athletic department. A new stadium, or upgrade of Lane to 80,000+ seats would be a primary goal. Cassell Coliseum would have to be replaced with a 15,000+ seat field house venue, not just the proposed superficial changes. Two new complete staffs would need to be created and run. To support more NIL and construction money, Tech is going to have to use the current venues for revenue generation during the off seasons; that means mass concerts and shows like the Metallica concert. Large crowds would be hosted outdoors in Lane. More than a few acts and touring combinations would come close to selling out Lane. Smaller concerts could be moved to Cassell.
Metallica was estimated to make $1.2 to $1.5 million. The final totals haven’t been published but with 70,000-90,000 fans in attendance between the parking and gate share, the concert probably netted more for the AD. The problem is that the staff doesn’t exist for concert/event promotion which stresses the existing staff to the limit. Tech will need to hire an event planning staff that specializes in concert promotion. There should be at least 4 concerts in Lane every Spring and Summer between April and mid-August. Cassell should also be set up to host smaller venue concerts that cannot be hosted in Moss Arts Center. Revival band tours, and local festival concerts could bring in respectable revenues. There would be an added community benefit because those events would provide revenue flows for hospitality franchises that are often fallow and struggling during the Summer months.
The end goal would be to broaden the revenue base for the construction of new facilities and the improvement of the current structures that would be capable of supporting a place in the Super 2 league structure.
Participation in a super league will also mean the need to expand the existing PR and Operations departments as they are going to be challenged to keep up with a much larger footprint. There needs to be more advertising and marketing since national attention will increase. Product placement and merchandizing will need to operate at a much larger level. Current PR operations are nice but constrained and the resources shared. Stepping up means bigger everything and that also means bigger more complete coaching staffs.
One of the big complaints after the Beamer era closed, was that Virginia Tech wasn’t keeping up with the massive coaching and assistant staff buildup of other teams in college sports, most especially football. Tech is still well short of what would be necessary to support a Super 2 level football program. Baseball struggles with just a few coaches, softball showed its limits in the 2025 season, and both men’s and women’s basketball get shortchanged for the understaffed football program.
The short summary on this one is that if Virginia Tech wants to be Super 2, it must expand its Athletic Department to meet that desire.
Choosing to Remain in the Rump ACC
If the ACC loses four teams (presumably FSU (B1G), Miami (SEC), Clemson (SEC), and North Carolina (B1G), what happens to Tech and the Conference with the top end cut off of it? The ACC certainly wouldn’t be crippled, but it would definitely fall back to being one of a jumble of mid-tier programs that would need to do some merging and reorganizing to remain competitive in its own environment. Presumably, the Rump ACC would remain quasi-amateur with more traditional venues seating and operations. It wouldn’t be a mid-major conference, but it would compete better with the top end of the MAC or Sun Belt conferences than even the middle of the Super 2 League divisions.Tech choosing to remain means the least level of disruption to administrative and competition levels. If the ACC and the presumed remainder of the Big XII merge the combined League might approach a 2nd tier solidification and maybe pull a few of the better teams out of the mid-majors. Of course, the coast-to-coast configuration of the conference will remain a travel and competition issue that a merger with the Big XII might actually help. The biggest issue will remain that the ACC as it could stand by 2030 is too small to generate much revenue on the media side and will always remain a moderate gate contender.
If Virginia Tech chooses to remain in the ACC to fight it out, to include the merger with the Big XII the challenges will be finding stability, and a flow of athletes of enough quality to remain competitive within the constructs of the new mid-tier league. The revenues are unlikely to change until the GoR expires in 2036 and a renegotiated contract provides different remuneration rates and regulations. By then, Congress and/or a Presidential commission might have reshaped and re-organized the NCAA in order to deal with the split between big revenue programs, and the more modest peloton schools.
Ultimately, this actually might not be a choice. It will take approximately $75million to part with the ACC towards the end of the settlement period. Few teams in the ACC have that sort of money to toss around casually, especially if it’s going to take even more money up front to compete in the Super 2 League. Yes, there is long term promise of higher revenues, but the programs likely to remain in the ACC after the haircut are pretty happy with their GoR revenues. The problems will remain with the professionalization and NIL issues, but there is the anticipated (though now on hold) NCAA vs. House settlement to consider those factors, too.
The ACC is ill equipped to pay players exorbitant money, and few if any programs will do more than bait a few players into participating for a year or two before moving on. If the Hokies choose to remain in the ACC, they are choosing to exist as a twilight program, until a new series of championships are established or evolve, and an actual, rational playoff of champions becomes standardized.
We will have to wait and see what happens in 2026 – 2030. Currently, that amounts to several lifetimes in the NIL and Transfer Portal era, and we didn’t even address the Portal with this article.
Now It is Your Turn to Say Something.
The first one sets up the second. Remember that even if no team leaves the ACC is still not going to be able to compete with the Super 2 for much of anything. They will control the playoffs, the media rights, and the TV audience shares.
Now for a follow up, which is related, but works regardless of the answer for the first question.
The 2025 ACC Football Season is Locked in at Stunningly Mediocre
Nobody is writing home to brag about the difficulty of schedule for most ACC teams. For the teams at the top of the conference, their standing for the bowl season ending invitational tournament will automatically be lower, unless they are playing lots of SEC and B1G non-conference stuff. Tech’s strength of schedule is unlikely to be very high at the end of the season, and the itch to move to a Super League might be calmed a bit by performance realities.
It’s difficult to say what a 2030 Virginia Tech Hokie program will actually do. It could be an entirely different organization at that point. The AD’s popularity is on the wane with the fanbase, and the academic side is more concerned about prestige and status in school related functions. Virginia Tech could be a very different place for the 2031 kickoff. What is certain is that college sports are changing to the point where the big revenue sports are professionalizing, and the non-revenue sports are beginning to shrink and risk elimination from “collegiate athletics” completely.
Eventually there will be a choice for colleges and universities to take, and the three options are all problematic: professionalization, re-invigorated collegiate athletics under new regulations, or abandoning scholarship sports altogether. The only end result will be some portion of the fan base who is angry and disappointed, or happy and content.
The House settlement is on hold. Congress is busy, and “The Nictator” on tap to chair a potential Presidential Commission has reservations for now. 2025 might be quiet, like the calm before...
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