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The ACC made more money last year: And we still pretty much sucked

Chris Graham
government money
Photo: © jackson/stock.adobe.com

The good news for the ACC: the conference was able to distribute $45 million to each of its 14 full-time member schools in the 2023-2024 academic sports year, a record for the conference.

The bad news: well, where do we start?

First, the 2023-2024 fiscal year was pre-expansion, with three more mouths to feed coming into the fold in the 2024-2025 sports year, in the form of SMU, Cal and Stanford.

The pool of ESPN TV money is still pretty shallow relative to the SEC (which paid out $53 million per school in 2023-2024) and the Big Ten (still waiting for 2023-2024 numbers; in 2022-2023, the B1G distributed, gulp, $62.9 million per school).

We get a little more from the expansion, but don’t be surprised to see the average drop when the 2024-2025 numbers come out this time next year.

What this means for the ACC – OK, like I care about the whole of the ACC; my focus is, what it means for UVA Athletics – the 2023-2024 year is about as good as it’s going to get for the foreseeable.

When you consider that 2023-2024 was prelude to what we saw this past year – ACC Basketball got just four teams into the NCAA Tournament, and though we did get two teams into the CFP, they were both one-and-done – yeah.

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Chris Graham

Chris Graham

Chris Graham is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, TikTok, BlueSky, or subscribe to Substack or his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected].