UNC Women’s Soccer’s Anson Dorrance: Stanford, Cal Move Should ‘Die on the Vine’

The longtime Tar Heels coach later clarified his statements slamming potential ACC expansion.

A number of ACC schools and leaders are said to oppose California and Stanford’s proposed entrance into the conference.

No one has been quite as blunt about it as North Carolina women's soccer coach Anson Dorrance.

Dorrance condemned the Golden Bears' and Cardinal's potential moves into the league in no uncertain terms Tuesday, laying out a financial and competitive incentive for the Tar Heels to oppose expansion.

“Our budgets aren’t extraordinary as it is, and now we would try to add in flights across the country to play these two schools, which would be incredibly expensive,” Dorrance said. “And then the fact that now we’re exposing the whole country—not that Stanford and Cal don’t have a national recruiting platform, of course they do—but if you put those two schools in the ACC, it’s gonna be so easy for them to recruit nationally. So it’ll just benefit them, in my opinion, not us.”

Dorrance has led North Carolina to 22 national championships—over half of all women’s soccer championships staged by the NCAA. Stanford has won three, while California produced one of the greatest players of all time in striker Alex Morgan.

“We’ve built the best women’s soccer conference in the country, and there’s no way I want to share the glory of our conference with two schools that could do a very good job recruiting against us,” Dorrance said. “And so basically, I want Cal and Stanford to die on the vine.”

After his remarks gained traction around the country, Dorrance issued a statement Wednesday morning clarifying his remarks, saying he respected the Cardinal and Golden Bears but did not believe "conference expansion is in the best interest of Carolina and the ACC at this time."

Statement from head coach Anson Dorrance. pic.twitter.com/XgeG7YAjLy

— UNC Women's Soccer (@uncwomenssoccer) August 23, 2023