A breakup of the ACC could be coming. Virginia Tech’s new president may have to deal with the potential demise of the school’s athletic conference.

When Richard Linton takes office in January as Virginia Tech’s 17th president, one of the many tasks before him will be one that has nothing to do with education or enrollment or research. At some point, he may have to deal with finding a suitable home for the Hokies if the Atlantic Coast Conference disintegrates.

This is not some idle sports speculation. This is now a matter of politics — and, as is the case with almost anything these days involving college sports, money.

Here’s a quick overview for those of you who aren’t sports fans: Once, college sports had five top-tier conferences that were all roughly the same in terms of revenue and were more or less geographically coherent. College players also didn’t get paid and had to sit out a year if they transferred to another school, which limited player movement. Now all that’s changed.

Players now get paid — Texas quarterback Arch Manning reportedly made $6.8 million last year — and can move around in the free market at a pace that would dizzy even Adam Smith. Fans demand that colleges provide them sports entertainment, but the costs don’t match up with what the marketplace naturally supplies. More dollars than ever flood into intercollegiate sports, but last year only 14 Division I schools were able to operate without relying on “institutional support,” which often involves mandatory student fees, either paid transparently (as they are in Virginia) or hidden inside other college costs (as they are in some states). One way or another, many students are incurring debt so their school can field an increasingly professionalized football team.

Often the most lucrative and surest form of athletic income for schools is broadcast revenue, but some schools are simply more marketable than others. That has destabilized the conference landscape, as some schools look to switch to conferences with bigger TV contracts — and conferences look to find new schools that TV networks will pay even more money for. As a result, we now have just four top-tier conferences — aka “the Power 4” — and there’s a yawning revenue gap opening between the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference at the top and the Big 12 and the Atlantic Coast Conference (in which Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia play). The Power 4 is about to become a Power 2. Beneath them, we have other schools who want to get into a Power 4 conference if they can. Just last week, James Madison University abruptly jumped from the Sun Belt Conference to the American Conference because that’s considered a step closer to the Power 4. (JMU may also be able to triple its meager broadcast revenue in the American Conference.)

In short, the college sports landscape is chaotic and increasingly expensive. The dominant question now is not “are you thinking about running the single wing next season?” but “which private equity firms are you talking with?” There’s also a very loud clock ticking, and it’s not the one that referees reset in that controversial Michigan-Western Michigan game earlier this season. This is a contractual clock: Starting after the 2029 football season and continuing for several years after that, the TV deals of major conferences start expiring — and, unless something is done, that’s expected to set off another round of musical chairs. TV networks will have a big say in what happens: “You know, we’d pay your conference a bazillion dollars more if you added such-and-such school.”

Some schools — particularly in the low-revenue ACC — might feel they could get so much more TV money in a different conference that suddenly it would be worth paying the exit fee to switch. At that point, the ACC is in danger of becoming the East Coast version of the Pac-12, that former Power 5 conference that saw 10 of its schools leave in a single year to cash in elsewhere. (Geography means little anymore. The Southeastern Conference is still pretty Southeastern, but the Atlantic Coast Conference now includes two schools in California that are just a few hours drive from the Pacific. The Big Ten stretches from coast to coast, with schools from Maryland and New Jersey and Seattle and Los Angeles.)

A mammoth bill now pending before the U.S. House of Representatives attempts to stabilize the college sports world — and hold down the spiraling costs that are driving this chase for more revenue. Critics say the bill would limit players’ ability to cash in, but that’s not our issue today. Instead, this is: One key provision seeks to preserve the existing conferences in college sports by capping how many schools can join a conference. Despite that cap, the version of the Protect College Sports Act that passed the Senate still allows for enough movement that more than half the ACC schools could leave in the coming years if TV deals elsewhere become more lucrative.

The specific language caps membership of Power 4 conferences at 20 schools apiece. Numbers no longer hold any meaning: The Big Ten has 18 members, the Big 12 has 16. The SEC has 16, and the ACC has 18, so under the Senate language, the Big Ten and ACC could add two schools, the SEC and Big 12 four apiece. Given the growing revenue disparity between the conferences, the most realistic scenario is schools from the ACC and Big 12 trying to get into the Big Ten and SEC because that’s where the big money is. To discourage schools from changing conferences, the original version of the bill required those jumpers to spend five years as an independent before joining a new league. In practical terms, that would be five years in a financial wilderness that few schools other than Notre Dame — which prizes its independent status and its single-school TV contract with NBC — could afford. Senators were persuaded to reduce that five-year waiting period to three years, which would still be an obstacle for some schools but might be doable for others who have deep-pocketed backers willing to cover expenses.

Since the Senate passed the bill earlier this month, some ACC schools — led by the four most likely to leave — have asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to amend the bill in a way that would make it easier for them to jump conferences. More to the point, the presidents of Clemson, Florida State, Miami and North Carolina have asked the speaker for two things. They want the conference membership cap raised to 22 (which conveniently would open up four spots in the Big Ten and six in the SEC). They also want that waiting period eliminated entirely.

“We believe these modifications preserve the stability Section 205 seeks to provide while allowing appropriate flexibility as college athletics continues to evolve,” they wrote. All these scholars must have studied George Orwell at some point because this is a fine example of misdirection.

A cap of 20 schools still means that 10 of the ACC’s 18 members could move to a higher-revenue conference. A cap of 22 schools means that 16 of the ACC’s 18 members could jump. Eliminating the waiting period makes a move pain-free — all gain and no loss. The point here is not whether schools should be forced to stay in conferences where they’re missing out on financial opportunities; the point is that the ACC as it currently exists seems in danger no matter what happens. If the Senate version of the bill passes, nearly half the league’s members could go away. If the proposed House version passes, nearly all could go away. If nothing happens, a bunch of schools will probably leave anyway as soon as they have a chance to find a new, more profitable conference home. There is no scenario now on the table that preserves the ACC as we’ve known it. That’s not a sports assessment; that’s a political and economic assessment.

The ACC’s predicament is made more difficult by the timing of all these contracts: Of the four power conferences, its media deal is the last to expire — in 2036. That means the other three will have time to negotiate new and surely more lucrative TV deals while the ACC is still locked into its current contract. That will further widen the financial gap between the conferences in the 2030s. No wonder Clemson, Florida State, Miami and North Carolina want Congress to enable them to leave with no waiting period. Once the Big Ten inks a new deal in, say, 2030, it’s open season. If some network tells the Big Ten, “Hey, we’ll make you a dragon’s horde more to add some media markets in the fastest-growing part of the country — the Southeast,” some of those ACC schools will stroke the exit fee check and never look back. They couldn’t afford to do otherwise. Once some schools get picked off, others will get nervous and have to protect their own interests: Is it better to stay in a reduced version of the ACC that has lost marquee schools or is it better to see if, say, the Big 12 looks more promising? That conference’s media deal ends after the 2031 season, so it will be the second league that might get an influx of new money — and new teams, if those new teams make the financial pie even bigger.

That’s the scenario that President-elect Linton and Virginia Tech Athletic Director Brian White must keep in the back of their minds: What happens if the ACC no longer looks like the ACC? What happens if the league falls apart completely? Where should Tech go? And what should it be doing now to position itself for that eventuality? This is a question not confined to Blacksburg. It’s also relevant in Charlottesville — and Richmond. In the early 2000s, then-Gov. Mark Warner helped get Tech into the ACC. Gov. Abigail Spanberger may never have to deal with these issues, but whoever is elected to succeed her in 2029 may. How much will that governor get involved in these decisions? Will that governor insist to board appointees that Virginia Tech and Virginia must be a package deal, or is it OK if they go separate ways? Whoever is planning to run can rest assured that somebody will ask them these things.

For now, the immediate question is whether that Protect College Sports Act will even come to a vote before this Congress wraps up — and then whether it will pass. “I think it’s going to have a difficult time,” Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, told me in an interview. The Congressional Black Caucus opposes the bill because it limits player earnings. The Republican-dominated delegations from Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina will see things through the lens of those four ACC schools that might want to leave. There may be a lot of institutional pressure not to do anything. “I’ve not gotten any impression that the Speaker is a big fan, either,” Griffith said.

On the other hand, Griffith said, “I want something.” There are lots of details yet to be reviewed and decided, but “it’s good for Virginia Tech,” he said, to bring some stability to college sports. That’s Griffith’s lens: His district includes Virginia Tech.

I contacted all 11 members of Virginia’s House delegation. Some sent statements, some didn’t respond. (See the accompanying box where I round up all these.) Two of those 11 representatives specifically wanted to talk. One was Griffith, which, given his district, makes sense. The other was Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun County, who had quite a bit to say. He said he was “a little pessimistic” that the bill will get voted on. However, if it is, “I think the Senate version is better than the House version and part of the reason is because the Senate version does a better job of preserving the ACC and preventing a situation where there’s a consolidation of the richest schools into two conferences and creates a sort of minor league” with others left behind.

“To me that kind of consolidation is not great,” he said. “Let’s have four conferences that make sense geographically. I look at what happened to the Big Ten already. You have USC [University of Southern California] flying out to New Jersey to play Rutgers in volleyball and Cal-Berkeley coming out here to play Virginia. That’s not great for the kids. There’s no consideration of anything other than football — maybe men’s basketball. We have to consider all the schools and all the amateur athletes.”

That’s why “I don’t like the direction the House bill is headed in,” Subramanyam said. He wants to see it harder for schools to change conferences because he’d like to preserve the ACC. “I want to protect our Virginia schools throughout this process,” he said. “We need to make sure we have a bill that’s good for schools large and small.”

If there’s not a vote in the lame duck session, “I hope we can come into next year with a Democratic majority and work something out with the Senate to put on the president’s desk, because the current situation is chaotic,” he said. “It’s a free-for-all.”

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