The Clemson football team is staying focused on what they need to do in fall camp, but the administration is continuing to monitor the wave of realignment occurring all over the nation.
The moves this summer have focused on the PAC-12, which lost six more members this summer as their television rights deal came in below expectations. Adding the announced departures last summer of USC and UCLA, the PAC now has only four teams expected to compete in 2024.
The Grant of Rights has kept schools from the Atlantic Coast Conference from jumping into the fray so far, but most insiders indicate that several schools are looking hard into ways to potentially get out of the GOR, which doesn’t expire until 2036.
If any ACC schools have the motivation to try to exit the GOR so they could join another conference in 2024, they will have to decide to do so quickly.
The deadline for a school to inform the ACC that they are leaving at the end of the 2023 athletic calendar is August 15th.
Clemson Football has not commented publicly on their feelings about the ACC
Informing the league a school is leaving does not relieve them of their contractual obligations in the GOR, and a departing team would also incur an exit fee.
This past spring, college football insiders said there were seven schools that weren’t satisfied with the status quo in the ACC, and some then suggested an eighth had joined them. Of those schools, Clemson and Florida State are usually characterized as the most likely to try to find a way to exit the GOR affordably.
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While Clemson has kept their opinions in house, Florida State used a meeting of their Board of Trustees to publicly express their dissatisfaction with the ACC. It seems if there is one school that might announce a departure by the deadline (which is only nine days away), it would most likely be FSU.
That said, it would still be surprising if a school announced a departure this month. It seems much more likely that if schools depart, it would be for the 2025 season at this point. Realignment is an unpredictable business, however, so all eyes will be on the ACC for at least the next nine days.
