ACC & ESPN Extend TV Deal, Dick Vitale To Remain In Your Lives Forever

We're not in the ACC yet but if something happens to impact the conference moving forward, it's fair to say we should take note in that.

For instance, the ACC and ESPN just re-upped their TV deal through 2026-27, which is so far into the future that I assume we'll all be watching Syracuse games on an HD forcefield in front of our faces.

When the ACC adds Pittsburgh and Syracuse, the conference will play an 18-game regular-season men's basketball schedule -- and ESPN networks will show an additional 30 regular-season games, plus two more conference tournament games. The new deal also adds 14 more football games, including three Friday night games (one of which, hosted by Boston College or Syracuse, to be played the day after Thanksgiving).

ESPN will televise a number of regular-season ACC women's basketball games, plus the entire conference tournament and will increase its coverage of Olympic sports, highlighted by baseball, softball, lacrosse along with men's and women's soccer.

Interesting that Syracuse got a shout-out in the second paragraph. I assume they are specifically saying that Syracuse and Boston College will play one another yearly the day after Thanksgiving, which makes perfect sense. Let's all just pray the game isn't moved to Plymouth, MA every year for the New York's Massachusetts' Turkey Classic or whatever.

The deal also notes that you can expect a whole of ACC football on their stations on Saturday afternoon and nights, Thursday nights and three Fridays a year as well as Thanksgiving Friday, Labor Day Monday and the ACC Football Championship Game.

ESPN also gained title sponsorship rights to all conference tournament events, which means we can all look forward to the Subway Fresh Take ACC Basketball Tournament any day now.

So the most important question is...what does this mean for Syracuse financially? It means $17 million dollars, apparently. Under the previous deal, each school would have received $4.1M, so by my fancy calculations, that's a better deal. It's not as good as the Big 12 deal, but, compared to what we were getting in the Big East, it's very good.

This also probably-maybe-kinda puts those Florida State/Clemson leaving rumors to bed. Then again, this is college athletics so you never, ever close that door...