Finally, we have a date for destruction.
The terms of the ACC’s settlement with Clemson and Florida State — specifically, the reduction in departure fees to a manageable amount — has created a firm timeline for the end of major college football’s conference structure as we know it.
The Power Five became the Power Four last year with the demise of the Pac-12.
Now, it seems, the Power Four has roughly a half-decade to exist before it becomes the Power Two or, perhaps, the Power Zero.
Set the sport’s Doomsday Clock for March 1, 2030.
Why then?
The stock market has triple witching hour, when a series of securities contracts expire on the third Friday of every third month, creating additional volatility.
Well, college sports now has its sextet witching window, with the six media rights contracts holding the whole shebang in place all expiring in a condensed period of time.
Five termination dates were previously established. Presuming the deals are hooked to the close of the fiscal year, they are:
June 30, 2030: Expiration of the Big Ten’s media rights contracts with Fox, NBC and CBS.
June 30, 2031: Expiration of the Big 12’s media rights contracts with Fox and ESPN.
June 30, 2032: Expiration of the College Football Playoff contract with ESPN and the NCAA Tournament contract with CBS and Turner.
June 30, 2034: Expiration of the SEC’s media rights contract with ESPN.
The ACC’s agreement with ESPN runs into the summer of 2036. But the settlement announced Tuesday allows for an early escape by reducing the total departure cost — that’s exit fees and grant-of-rights withholdings — to a mere $75 million per school starting in 2030.
That date was specifically selected with the other contract expirations in mind. Clemson and Florida State want flexibility to leave the conference in time for the new world order to begin. (So, too, do North Carolina and Miami, although they did not take the ACC to court.)
You’ll notice our Doomsday Clock is set to toll in March 2030, months before the expiration of any contracts listed above.
There’s a simple reason: The Big Ten schools will need deals in place, either with the conference itself or another entity, prior to the 2030 football season.
(Our suspicion is the matter will be resolved in mid-to-late 2029. While the other chess pieces are linked directly to the Big Ten’s fate, the details of those could take a few months to play out.)
And crucially, there is precedent for the early movement of schools and the alterations of media contracts.
— The SEC announced in December 2020 that it would move its ‘Game of the Week’ off of CBS and onto ESPN/ABC starting in the 2024 season, a four-year gap between contractual agreement and practical implementation.
— Texas and Oklahoma announced in July 2021 that they would exit the Big 12 and join the SEC prior to the start of the 2025 football season. They later negotiated an early departure and competed in the SEC in 2024. (Everything has a price.)
— The Big Ten announced its groundbreaking media deal with Fox, CBS and NBC in Aug. 2022, a full year before the conference added Oregon and Washington at partial revenue shares.
Those moves lay the legal and functional foundations for any changes to media contracts or conference affiliations that are required to reset the Power Four chessboard in the early 2030s.
Put another way: Florida State, Clemson, Miami and North Carolina could agree to leave the ACC in 2030 even if their change in affiliation comes two or three years later; and a media company could agree to absorb new schools into its agreement without overhauling the original deal.
As a result, the landscape is wide open for the early 2030s, with a dozen possibilities. Three possible endgames come immediately to mind:
*** Scenario 1: The ACC’s rebellious children determine the new revenue distribution models, which are based on competitive success and TV ratings, offer the dollars needed to compete at the top of the sport.
Frequent CFP bids in the second half of the 2020s lead to the realization that kingpin status in the ACC is preferred over the Herculean struggle required in the SEC and Big Ten. (We call this Oklahoma Syndrome.)
As a result, the ACC remains intact until the expiration of the media contract in the summer of 2036, and the Power Four structure lives on.
*** Scenario 2: Florida State, Clemson and either Miami or North Carolina (or both) leave the ACC for the Big Ten and SEC.
(Key point, Fox, which owns the Big Ten’s media rights, does not have an A-level college football property in Florida and might have designs on the Hurricanes or Seminoles when the Big Ten negotiates a new media deal in 2029-30.)
The concurrent departures devastate the ACC, leaving behind second-tier football schools with limited media value.
Those left behind could consolidate into a small, Group of Five-esque conference.
They could merge with the Big East for basketball.
Or they could join forces with the Big 12 to create a 24- to -28 school receptacle for any Power Four football programs not invited to the SEC or Big Ten. (We outline this endgame 2.5 years ago.)
*** Scenario 3: The era of revenue sharing, tentatively set to begin this summer, serves as a mass extinction event.
Schools that have the means and willpower to devote more than $20 million annually to their football rosters — that total includes internal payments to athletes and traditional, external NIL — will thrive in the new landscape.
Schools without the means or willpower will lose games, relevance and value from 2025-30, to the point that the sport effectively cleaves along lines that, even today, are easy to envision.
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Meanwhile, a media ecosystem driven by the desire for premier football matchups creates the runway for a super league. Many have forecast the inclusion of 60 or 70 teams, but we see just 32 or 40. The networks won’t pay big dollars for mediocre matchups.
Everyone else drops into regional leagues that form a middle ground more akin, in cost and competition, to today’s Group of Five than the mini-NFL model forged by the super league.
That said, the most important components in all this are the unknown unknowns.
Will current or future legal challenges to the NCAA’s amateurism model redirect the trajectory of major college sports?
What impact will revenue sharing have on the fiscal and competitive viability of football programs across not only the Power Four but the entirety of FBS?
How will the enrollment apocalypse expected to whack higher education in coming years impact institutional subsidies for both football Olympic sports and football and basketball programs.
Might someone consider the mental and physical welfare of the athletes?
Could developments in the media ecosystem (e.g., new technologies or changes in consumption) transform the economics of content distribution?
We have no idea if the next College Football Playoff will have 12 teams or 16 or 24.
Or whether the championship game will be played Jan. 1 at the Rose Bowl or in early February, the week before the Super Bowl.
Or whether the distribution rights will be owned by ESPN or Netflix.
We don’t even know if the Big Ten and SEC will exist in recognizable form by the middle of the next decade.
But now, finally, we know when we’ll know.
Butterflies flapped their wings in Tallahassee and Clemson, and the Doomsday Clock started to tick.
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