You think you’re affected by the constant flow of clickbait on conference realignment as a fan or alum? Imagine being a student-athlete at one of the schools that ends up featured in some of the clickbait.
The student-athlete side of this was brought to my attention over the weekend when a friend connected in Virginia high-school sports circles seemed surprised that we didn’t already know that UVA is headed to the SEC next year.
She had the news firsthand, she said, matter of factly, from a student-athlete at the University, a member of one of the school’s Olympic sports teams.
The student-athlete confirmed in a text conversation that their team – I’m using the they/their pronouns so as not to give anything away about the program, because obviously – had been told in May and then again last week to prepare for the possibility of a move, and seemed genuinely upset that there could be a chance that they wouldn’t be able to finish their athletics career at UVA.
Which isn’t quite, Virginia is headed to the SEC, just, be prepared, in case something happens.
Please disperse: There’s nothing to see here
I reached out to a UVA Athletics spokesperson to try to learn more, and as I expected, the word is, there’s no there there.
More on that later in the column. Basically, as I’ve written extensively, there’s a lot keeping schools like Virginia from being able to bolt from the ACC, the big issue being, money.
After a back and forth on this, my best guess is that the topic of, what’s going to happen to us with everything else going on in college athletics, would naturally be coming up among student-athletes these days, particularly those in what we call the Olympic sports, the euphemism that we use to denote that those sports aren’t football or men’s basketball, i.e. the ones that don’t make money.
Conference realignment is almost all about football, and the TV money associated with it. Which is why it didn’t seem to factor in at all for USC and UCLA when deciding to make the move to the Midwest-based Big Ten that in addition to football, they’re also going to have to schedule conference matchups with schools two and three thousand miles away in, oh, for example, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, wrestling.
If Virginia were to leave the ACC for the SEC, for example, lacrosse and wrestling would be on the hook, since the SEC doesn’t do lacrosse and wrestling at the conference level.
Missouri, due to its long history in the Big 12, still has a wrestling program, and competes as an associate member of the Big 12.
Virginia could do lacrosse and wrestling as an associate member of another conference, and if it were to make the move to the SEC, it would be a safe bet that it would want to do both, considering the long history of success in lacrosse, and the recent investments made in wrestling.
But if you’re a kid in a college program, it’s just, again, natural to wonder what could be in store, with the endless speculation that we’re seeing from all corners about what is next, and more to the point, who is next.
500 million reasons why this isn’t happening
Just to be clear, this column isn’t some backdoor way for me to try to let on that I have some inside info on UVA going to the SEC.
I don’t.
As I’ve written extensively this summer, a lot would have to happen to make something like that possible, and the awful lot that would have to happen involves ungodly gobs of money.
The biggest sticking point is UVA’s grant of media rights to the ACC that would require the payment of an exit fee reportedly in the neighborhood of $120 million plus the surrender of upwards of $35 million per year for the duration of the media rights grant, which expires in 2036.
The total price tag, in the area of $500 million-plus, would seem to be prohibitive, absent something else going on.
The only out would appear to be a mass exodus from ACC members that would invalidate the grants of media rights.
It would take a majority of conference members to vote to break the media rights deal, and the idea that there’d be eight schools looking to leave is a bit much, because you’d have to assume they’d all be going to one conference, and that the one conference would have to be the SEC, since ESPN owns the TV rights to the ACC, and the TV rights to the SEC.
And then you’d have to think through: why would ESPN essentially set fire to one of its TV properties to then throw a lot more money at another of its TV properties?
That’s a question for the bean counters.
Pressure on the kids
It’s tough enough being a college student-athlete – balancing training, competition, school, for those in sports with partial scholarships, being able to pay tuition.
The extra stress of having to wonder if the rug is about to be taken from under you can’t be good.
The 500 million reasons why ACC schools aren’t going to be making a move might make sense to people on the outside.
If all you wanted to do all your life was play volleyball, or lacrosse, or to wrestle, in the ACC, and you think that could be taken away from you, that’s tough.
I’d suggest that maybe the UVAs and other Power 5 schools of the world should have a way to formally address this internally with the student-athletes, maybe make it a part of their regular mental health outreach.
The kid whose story got my attention over the weekend seems pretty torn up about the uncertainty, perceived or otherwise.
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Chris Graham
