Tim Pernetti seemed to dump more fuel on the ongoing realignment fire Tuesday at AAC Media Days as he spoke with media members.
Just one day after ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips pitched the benefits of his conference publicly, Pernetti spoke candidly with reporters about the future of his conference and college football as a whole.
What Did Tim Pernetti Say At AAC Media Days Regarding Realignment?
“My favorite line: Nothing’s off the table. It can’t be for us.”
The AAC has been one of the better Group of Five conferences for the past decade. Still, after losing Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF to the Big 12 in 2023 and reigning conference champion SMU to the ACC in 2024, the conference has had to scramble to add members to maintain the competitive standing it has held.
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Add to the departures the expansion of the College Football Playoff and an automatic bid for the best Group of Five team, and it’s plain to see why Pernetti embraces the idea that nothing is off the table. His conference is in survival mode.
The additions of Charlotte, FAU, North Texas, Rice, UAB, and UTSA from Conference USA in 2023 and Army in 2024 should give the conference more candidates to break through into the playoffs.
Pernetti was questioned about the availability of Oregon State and Washington State, the lone members of what was once the Pac-12.
“Everybody is talking to everybody at this point,” Pernetti said. “I don’t think there’s a commissioner in America that would wake up in the morning and have a comfortable feeling about their own conference stability.”
The statements continued a trend from around college football during Media Day season. Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark stated at his conference address that, ‘Two years later, I guess you could say we’re still open for business.’
The conference has also floated the idea of rebranding the name with a corporate partner and dabbled in adding members Gonzaga and UConn for basketball purposes.
Jim Phillips was unafraid to discuss topics like conference revenue and the potential for more members and resources in his opening remarks on Monday at ACC Media Days. He pitched the fact that the ACC had distributed the third highest amount of revenue to its members as part of the strategy for the conference moving forward.
Seemingly, every conference is pushing to do something…except for the SEC. Greg Sankey rebuffed any discussion for potential expansion, stating quite blankly that the conference was happy at 16 teams and expected to remain that way into the future.
The contrast in Sankey’s statement against the others is primarily a question of money. Reports stated that the SEC took in roughly $850 million in revenue, which led to roughly $51 million being distributed to member schools in the 2023 fiscal year. Those numbers should jump substantially as the new media deal with ESPN, a 10-year $3 billion agreement continues.
While Pernetti’s comments didn’t specifically mention money, it’s clear the biggest motivator for realignment is the payout from conferences. With the SEC sitting at the head of the ESPN media table, others will need to find ways to make up the difference.
Change has been a constant in college football from the beginning, and it will continue to change and evolve as the game grows.
This era is no different, and with even more investment into the business side of college athletics, those changes could shape the future of multiple sports. Growth has often been touted as a good thing, and while the recent changes to the sport via realignment and NIL have created new problems, the potential to find new avenues and solutions could provide us with a better version of the sport than ever before.
At the very least, we know that Tim Pernetti isn’t keeping anything off the table.
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