The Atlantic Coast Conference will expand to 18 schools.

The conference announced on Friday morning that California, Stanford and SMU will join the league as full-time members beginning in the 2024-25 season. The ACC has 17 full member schools, with Notre Dame as the 18th school for every sport except football, where it remains an independent.

There's a couple of interesting elements to the ACC's expansion announcement Friday that it has become the third of the four remaining major football conferences to establish a west coast (or close to it) presence, jumping in size to 17 football schools and 18 for basketball, and creating a whole lot of new travel realties for the conference's student-athletes.

By adding the San Francisco Bay Area's Cal and Stanford, and simultaneously creating a footprint in the huge Metroplex market of Dallas-Fort Worth with the invitation of SMU, the ACC has left the Pac 12 with only two schools looking for new homes before ceasing operations, and staved off, at least for the near-term, all the confrontational discussion this off season among some ACC administrators complaining about the growing revenue gap with the Big Ten and SEC.

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips might have acted more swiftly to add all the remaining Pac 12 schools after Oregon and Washington announced their departure for the Big 10 on August 7, but in the end he did orchestrate this much-needed league expansion milestone that if not achieved, would have most assuredly led to current members departing.

Phillips finally convinced enough of the league's presidents (12) to understand the financial realities of growing the revenue base, while confined by an ESPN contract running until 2036, and he was able to add the marketable trio of schools with long athletic traditions and impressive academics at a huge discount.

Cal and Stanford will only receive a 30% revenue share for seven years, gradually increasing to 100% in 10 years, while SMU will not receive any media rights for its first nine ACC seasons.

All three schools will rely on booster funding to fill in the large gaps, increased with new travel expenses to the east coast.

Overall, we hate how the realities of network TV contracts have completely upended the geographic realities of college sports conference rivalries and tradition, but that shipped has long sailed.

Imagine if the proposed all-sports Eastern Conference in the 1980s would have taken off and every Syracuse opponent would have been no more than say, a six hour drive away.

Starting in 2024-25, some road games will take a six hour flight and be played three time zones away.

Welcome to the new age of Syracuse athletics in the "A&P." The Atlantic (and Pacific) Coast Conference.

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