Cal chancellor Carol Christ was awoken at 5 a.m. Pacific Time with a loud knock on her hotel room door in San Diego. She opened the door, where a hotel employee informed her she had an urgent phone call.
“It turned out to be very good news,” she said Friday.
After a tumultuous month of conference realignment, Cal and Stanford will remain in a “power” conference, joining the ACC. SMU is also coming aboard as the league expands to 17 full members, plus Notre Dame in non-football sports. Yet another conference will span coast to coast. The future of Cal and Stanford involves more trips east, less television revenue than most of their new conference peers and perhaps splitting the travel distance with conference gatherings in Dallas.
“A month ago, I didn’t have any gray hair,” Cal athletic director Jim Knowlton joked. “So yes there is a little bit of relief, but we’ve been working on options for a year. For a month, it’s been a frenzy to evaluate all those options. I’m thrilled with where we ended up because it really feels like it fit all our criteria.”
With Cal, Stanford and SMU’s jump to the ACC, what does it mean for the bigger picture of realignment?
“Everyone is just doing what they can to survive at this point.” pic.twitter.com/G2a6X9r7uI
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