UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees releasing statement opposing proposed ACC expansion

Conference reportedly attempting to add Stanford, Cal, and SMU

Atlantic Coast Conference university leaders are set to meet Friday morning as the league tries to come to a decision on expanding West with Stanford, California and SMU, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told The Associated Press.

It was unclear if the presidents will take a decisive vote on adding new members, said the person, who spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because the conference and schools were not making internal discussions public.

The ACC has been weighing expansion for several weeks. The presidents and chancellors were scheduled to hold a call Monday night to delve into expansion, but the deadly shooting of a professor at the University of North Carolina led the conference to put its business on hold. ESPN first reported Friday’s rescheduled call.

Meanwhile, a statement attributed to UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees opposes the potential additions.

Statement of David L. Boliek Jr., Chair, UNC-CH Board of Trustees, and John P. Preyer, Vice Chair, UNC-CH BOT

August 31, 2023

“The strong majority of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees opposes the proposed expansion of the Atlantic Coast Conference to include Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Southern Methodist University. Although we respect the academic excellence and the athletic programs of those institutions, the travel distances for routine in-conference competitive play are too great for this arrangement to make sense for our student athletes, coaches, alumni and fans. Furthermore, the economics of this newly imagined transcontinental conference do not sufficiently address the income disparity ACC members face. Without ironclad assurances that the proposed expansion serves the interest of UNC-Chapel Hill, we believe it should be voted down.”