There are certain teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference that would love an opportunity for a fresh start, and among those teams is the North Carolina Tar Heels. There have been rumblings for the last few weeks that they are involved in trying to modify the current version of the Protect College Sports Act that states that teams that leave their current conference to join another one will have to be independent for three years, which basically means you are forfeiting conference money during that time.
You know who can afford to do that? Notre Dame. You know who can’t? Anybody else.
Still, dream-threatening bill aside, there is now talk that UNC may be a front-runner to join the SEC, but there’s a huge asterisk. As reported by Brett McMurphy with On3, industry sources allege that the SEC allegedly has the Tar Heels and Virginia at the top of their wish list should the conference become interested in realignment again. The bad news, though, is that neither the SEC nor the Big Ten are expected to add new schools anytime soon. What to do with the information provided by McMurphy is really up to the reader — there’s too many variables to say that realignment won’t happen sooner than the two conferences claim it will, but those same variables could handcuff UNC to the ACC for the unforeseeable future.
What we can say for sure according to these sources, though, is that nobody is interested in Clemson, Florida State, and Miami, all of whom also are fighting hard to make sure the PCSA doesn’t pass in its current form. The reasoning from the SEC side is that their league already has schools in these two states, so they don’t need to pile on.
When it comes to the Big Ten, here’s what McMurphy’s sources said regarding any interest coming from that conference:
“A differentiating factor (that would be considered) is how big a pain their Board of Regents are being. No one wants to add a problem teammate.”
Similar to the UNC-specific information above, do with that statement what you will.
As of right now, nobody knows what will happen with the bill that is trying to be pushed through in Congress, so really all of this is simply meaningless gossip. That isn’t to say that none of it is true, but the truth doesn’t matter if there are guardrails put into place that make it hard for any team to move to a new conference. It would be great for UNC’s pocketbook to make a move, but that would also be adding fuel to the rather large fire that currently exists in college athletics. Either way, the ACC Grant of Rights does expire at some point, and something tells me trying to keep the conference intact is going to get really, really ugly when the time comes.
But what do you think of McMurphy’s report? Do you think UNC could actually pull off escaping the ACC anytime soon? Let us know in the comments below.
