Cal Sports Report

Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush Push for Stanford, SMU to ACC

Cal could benefit from heavy hitters' influence. Would Stanford, Cal consider moving down to FCS if ACC attempt fails?

Jake Curtis

If a former President of the United States or a former Secretary of State gives you a call, you pick up.

Condoleezza Rice, a current Stanford professor and a former Secretary of State has spoken to Atlantic Coast Conference officials recently, trying to convince them that conference expansion – by way of adding Stanford and Cal – in in their best interest, according to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo. Former President George W. Bush is doing similar stumping with the ACC on behalf of SMU, his wife's  alma mater and the site of his library.

Whether their involvement is having any impact is unclear, but it indicates Stanford – and by extension Cal – are still hoping to join the ACC and are pulling out all the stops to make it happen. The Bay Area schools are just one vote short of the 12 yes votes they need for approval to join the ACC, and maybe the heavy hitters can convince one of the schools against adding Stanford and Cal (Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and North Carolina State) to change its mind.

Here is one excerpt from the Yahoo report:

Powerful figures connected to Stanford — as well as SMU — are on a campaign to encourage leaders within the ACC to rethink their position on acquiring the two schools, as well as Cal. Both of those figures, Rice and Bush, have communicated with conference officials in pursuit of a membership invitation for the schools in which they are vested, multiple sources tell Yahoo Sports.

It seems Stanford is driving the bus and Cal is a passenger along for the ride wherever that bus takes it. Of course, impressions from the outside can be deceiving in the secretive world of conference negotiations, but the realignment reports regarding the Golden Bears and the Cardinal seem to indicate that Stanford is the focal point of discissions.

Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News suggests something will happen soon regarding the ACC, and that things look promising for Cal and Stanford.

Each report is inspected and parsed as possible clues to what Cal and Stanford will do next as they search for a conference home starting in the summer of 2024. And 19 paragraphs into Wednesday ESPN.com report on the status of the ACC included this excerpt regarding Notre Dame’s interest in bringing Cal and Stanford into the ACC:

Not only did the Irish like the idea of bringing in two elite academic schools with stellar Olympic sports programs, one source noted there was also a football perspective to all this. There is a fear among college administrators that if Stanford gets left out of a Power 5 conference, it would drop football to a non-FBS level. That, of course, would affect the longstanding Notre Dame-Stanford football series, which has been played every year since 1988 (excluding the COVID year of 2020).

Wait! What?

We had to read the middle sentence of that excerpt again:

There is a fear among college administrators that if Stanford gets left out of a Power 5 conference, it would drop football to a non-FBS level.

Is that true? Would Stanford consider dropping down to the FCS level in football, joining the likes of Sacramento State, UC Davis, Harvard and Yale in that division?

And by extension, would Cal, left with no alternatives, join Stanford in a demotion from the big time (i.e. FBS) to the group seldom seen on TV (i.e. FCS)? The two schools seem joined at the hip in this search for a 2024 conference home.

So where do they go from here?

Are Stanford and Cal putting all their eggs in the ACC basket?

Will Rice call Big Ten folks to see if they might change their mind? After all, the Big Ten would be the preferred conference for Stanford and Cal, even though the Big Ten has given every indication that is not interested in further expansion at the moment.

And, oh yes, there is still the issue of Washington State and Oregon State and the possibility of rebuilding the Pac-12.

Cover photo of Condoleezza Rice by Michael Caterina USA TODAY NETWORK

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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