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Opinion December 12, 2024 10 mins read

OPINION: ACC Weaknesses – Funding Shortfalls, Poor Leadership and Missed Opportunities

Opinion ı By USA Herald

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As ESPN has lost roughly 12 million subscribers over the past five years due to a decline in cable network television viewership, skeptics argue whether the ACC Network will make much of a difference at all in gaining extra revenue for the universities. Despite the announcement from both ESPN and John Swofford, project details have stayed private, with any information outside of programming basics currently unavailable. When bureaucrats lack transparency, they are never hiding positive news.

To be fair to the conference, all hope is not lost. The three-year gap before the network goes live in 2019 leaves ESPN with time to tamper with the paid television model as more and more viewers continue to leave cable television behind.

As the ACC’s main point of reliance seems to be on college basketball, their attempts to gain the 29 million subscribers from the nine states from which their teams hail is going to come down to whether the viewership demand is there. The biggest challenge that the ACC Network faces is their lack of football fan dedication when compared to the SEC or Big Ten. Adding teams from the northeast whose fans do not attend home games, not to mention travel is an abject failure of the Swofford era, and he needs to be held accountable.

To make up for their football strategy failures, the ACC has announced an increase from 18 to 20 in men’s basketball games. This small effort is an attempt to garner more fan attention to raise ESPN ratings and create more cash flow to the ACC. However, with football still primarily responsible for much of the viewership on conference networks, the ACC has a huge distribution obstacle to overcome to find success with its own network – whether subscribed or simply available on-line.

If the strategy of the ACC were to deemphasize athletics, especially football, Swofford should be commended. He seems to be on the path to doing just that. Perhaps it is the secret goal of the ACC to return football to its original role as an extra-curricular activity. Paying coaches $5M and professors $100K a year seems inequitable for organizations whose mission is educating our next generation of leaders anyway. Maybe the goal of the ACC is to rival the IVY league? Jocks still get admission preference at Ivy League schools, so there is still hope for the non-scholarship athletes who would play ball for Clemson and Florida State. We can only wonder how such a team would do against Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide?

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