Stanford willing to join ACC at a major discounted rate

Stanford is willing to sacrifice some money in order to be in a Power 5 conference

As we learned on Thursday, the ACC is expected to vote on allowing Stanford, Cal, and SMU on Friday.

The two Pac-12 programs came up one vote short this past week, and based on a report from the AP, they are willing to make a sacrifice that may change the mind of the four schools opposed to their entry. The sacrifice in question? Well, as we all know media rights and realignment is all about money, but Stanford is willing to join the ACC at a discounted rate or maybe even for free for a few years.

Leaders from Stanford, California, Oregon State and Washington State spoke Thursday, and Stanford told its colleagues it had informed the ACC that it would be open to joining the conference at greatly reduced or even no media rights payout for several years, a person familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press

While it seems less than ideal to join at a discounted rate there are two main reasons it makes sense. For starters, Stanford is a wealthy enough school to not need television money at the moment. According to their website, their endowment in 2021 was nearly $38 billion, which they turned around and spent about 5% of that money on things such as including financial aid, student services, faculty salaries, research, libraries, and athletics. That 5% covers over 20% of their expenses, and equates to about $6.8 billion.

Joining at the discounted rate or even free may also convince programs like Florida State and Clemson who are wanting more money to stick around longer as one could assume that's why Stanford would be willing to do this. All Stanford needs is one of four schools to flip