Report: ACC Exploring Adding Stanford, Cal

The Pitt Panthers' conference could have some new cross-country members

PITTSBURGH -- The home conference of the Pitt Panthers could gain some west coast members in the near future, as conference realignment continues to rock the world of college athletics. 

The Pac-12 appears on the verge of collapse as Arizona State, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Washington and Oregon are all set to follow UCLA and USC's in pursuit of a different conference with more money and exposure. That could lead Stanford and Cal, two of the bigger brands remaining in the Pac-12, to become conference-mates with Pitt in the ACC. The two schools and the league are expected to meet and discuss their options, according to a report from Pete Thamel of ESPN. 

Sources: In the next 24 hours, there’s two calls for the ACC to vet and have early exploratory discussions on the potential addition of Cal and Stanford. One is for ACC athletic directors and the other for the league's presidents and chancellors.

— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) August 7, 2023

"There's been some Stanford-ACC smoke that has emerged," Thamel said in an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show this week. Stanford is this vibrant, teeming athletic department filled with all these world-class people and they have great facilities and they have nowhere to go right now. And could they and Cal end up in some sort of hybrid ACC or some sort of ACC west coast wing? I don't know. That's not a no-brainer for either side. So it's like 'Let's run that ground out.'"

Thamel added that there is some motivation for the Pac-12 schools to remain in their league with the addition of perhaps some Mountain West defectors, because they would retain an automatic bid to NCAA tournaments and, in theory, still receive an automatic bid to the 12-team college football playoff as a Power 5 conference champion. 

But that could change in the near future as the highest level of college athletics gets shuffled. That, plus the fate of coming television rights negotiations for either conference, would dictate how these schools approach a potential move.

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