Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski has never been shy about his stance on conference realignment. Even when the ACC added Syracuse, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Louisville to the conference’s future plans, Krzyzewski has said that he hates that realignment surplants the more than 60 years of tradition that his conference has built. When Maryland announced in November 2012 that it would depart for the Big Ten following this season, Krzyzewski said the issue of conference realignment hit home for him more than ever.
But when the ACC passed a Grant of Rights agreement in April, providing the conference with stability for the future, Krzyzewski said he could finally examine the big picture—now that the messy process of realignment has drawn to a close, the ACC is left with what he believes is the greatest basketball conference ever.
“The ACC, like a number of conferences, was very vulnerable. There is no question about it,” Krzyzewski said. “Now we are solid, when we got [the Grant of Rights], my attitude changed.”
The agreement, which awards the teams’ television rights to the conference rather than the individual schools, effectively locks the ACC’s 15 members schools into the conference until the deal expires following the 2026-27 season—the assumption being that in addition to paying the ACC’s $52 million exit fee, no other conference would want to accept an ACC member knowing that they would not see any of the benefits from the school’s televison contract.
Consisting of 12 teams since the 2004-05 cycle of conference realignment, the ACC will expand to 15 teams July 1 with the addition of Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Notre Dame. Exiting the ACC will be Maryland, which decided last November to join to the Big Ten in 2014 and is currently fighting to avoid paying the $52 million ACC exit fee. Louisville will replace the Terrapins to keep the ACC at 15 teams—14 full members and Notre Dame in all sports except football.
“I love what’s happening with our conference,” said Krzyzewski in May as he accepted his position to remain the head coach of USA Basketball through 2016. “We’re going to be a 10-bid conference. We’re going to be the best conference in the history of the game. It’s exciting to be a part of that.”
The new-look conference be able to claim leadership and history of its teams as demonstrations of success.
The ACC will pace all other conferences next season, with a total of 60 Final Four appearances between its member institutions. The conference will have 15 national titles, second only to the Pac-12, whose total of 16 can be attributed largely to UCLA’s 10 national championships under John Wooden. Five of the top 12 winningest programs in NCAA basketball history will call the ACC home.
More recently, next year’s ACC members have won four national championships and appeared in 10 Final Fours in the past decade, both of which lead all other conferences over that span.
Following Louisville’s inclusion in 2014, the ACC will also feature four coaches already in the Basketball Hall of Fame and a total of eight Naismith Coach of the Year awards between the current coaches of the 15 teams.
“You have four Hall of Fame coaches, four who have won national championships, and no conference has that,” Krzyzewski said. “I think we need to build on that, the fact that we have that instantly. And the other coaches in our conference are guys who might achieve that.”
If the current and future ACC teams are able to replicate their recent success in the coming decade, the conference will likely assume the title as the greatest competitive conference in basketball history, surpassing the 1980s Big East and its own successes in the 1990s and then again from 2001 to 2010.
Only the Pac-12 has captured more than three national titles in a ten-year span, doing so as the Pac-8 in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to Wooden’s Bruins. The parity of the ACC distinguishes the conference in that comparison—no Pac-8 team other than UCLA even reached a Final Four between 1961 and 1987.
Now the winningest coach in college basketball history believes the conference needs to embrace the opportunity it has created and factor the quality of its basketball teams into its decision-making process. Krzyzewski also said that the quantity of elite teams one his conference schedule will also affect how he approaches the season with the Blue Devils.
“The regular season championship can’t be a goal. It has to be a byproduct of becoming really good by the end,” Krzyzewski said. “We should be a league where you can get eight to 10 teams in the tournament. So make sure that you are going to be tested, you’re healthy and you’re one of those teams going into the ACC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament.”
Despite the high level of competition, Krzyzewski also hopes the teams and coaches in the new conference will keep the goals of the ACC in mind. He said that coaches should talk about the number of NCAA Tournament berths the ACC is getting as a whole alongside with the obvious goal of earning one for their own teams. Krzyzewski said that type of conference-centric discussion—a rarity in college basketball—has already started among some of the coaches.
If all goes to Krzyzewski’s plan, it could result in one of the wildest and most competitive seasons in ACC basketball history.
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