Written by Andrew Coppens at Bloguin
Modern day college athletics is more about money than it has ever been about before. Conference expansion, television deals and network creation are all about the eyeballs and money that can be added to the conference coffers.
The SEC and Big Ten lead the revenue side of big-time college athletics, and the ACC wasn’t supposed to be that far behind. It reworked a television deal with ESPN to pull them in close to the SECs and Big Tens of the world. There were promises of an ACC Network as well.
Since then though, ACC programs haven’t exactly reaped the benefits of said increases in revenue streams. Partly because the ACC Network is still in the works and appears to be on hold, but also because the cost of doing business has risen to levels few of these programs can afford.
It has all led to a major crisis in conference athletic department bottom lines. According to aWashington Post article, all but two of the ACC’s full-member institutions are in the negative despite major increases in revenue streams.
To be fair to the ACC, it isn’t the only conference with problems, with schools like Auburn, Maryland and Rutgers running big deficits and all but two Pac-12 schools in the red as well. However, the ACC is special in that almost every member of the conference is seeing their athletic budgets dripped in red ink, including two programs that were in the black just a decade ago.
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