The ACC officially welcomed California, Berkeley, Southern Methodist and Stanford as full members with full voting participation, the league announced Monday.
SMU’s first official day in the ACC was Monday while Cal and Stanford will become official members Aug. 2. All three institutions will begin conference competition this fall.
“This summer marks a momentous occasion for the ACC with the addition of three prestigious institutions – Cal, SMU, and Stanford,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said in a release. “Since our announcement last September, the conference has been diligently preparing to become an 18-member league that spans from coast to coast. We look forward to the future of this incredible league and extend a warm welcome to the student-athletes, coaches, staff, campus communities, alumni, and supporters of Cal, SMU, and Stanford into the ACC.”
More than 2,200 student-athletes from Cal, SMU and Stanford will join the nearly 10,000 current ACC student-athletes competing at the highest level of intercollegiate athletics.
The ACC’s expansion is the seventh in the league’s history and gives the league the most members that it has had in the conference’s history. The conference moved to eight members in 1979 with the addition of Georgia Tech and expanded for a second time in 1992 with Florida State. The ACC added three members in 2004 and 2005 as both Miami and Virginia Tech joined the league in 2004, followed by Boston College in 2005.
Syracuse and Pitt joined in 2013, as did Notre Dame, who agreed to join the ACC in all conference-sponsored sports except football. Louisville accepted an invitation to become a full member of the ACC in 2014.
Cal, SMU and Stanford will begin competing in the ACC across their respective sponsored sports beginning in the 2024-25 academic year. No conference offers more than the ACC’s 15 women’s sports and 28 total sponsored sports.
Cabrera joins ACC’s board of directors
Tech president Angel Cabrera was recently announced as part of the ACC’s executive committee, along with Virginia president James E. Ryan, Wake Forest president Susan R. Wente, Boston College president William Leahy, Miami chief executive officer and acting president Joe Echevarria and Pittsburgh chancellor Joan Gabel.
Ryan will also serve as the league’s chair of the board of directors for the second year of his two-year term. Wente will be the vice-chair.
The chair of the faculty athletic representatives for the 2024-25 academic year will be Jennifer Irish (Virginia Tech). Boo Corrigan (North Carolina State) will be the chair of the athletics directors and Marielle vanGelder (North Carolina) will serve as the chair of the senior woman administrators.
The ACC adopted changes to its constitution and bylaws in 2020 that officially established the 15 – now 18 – league presidents and chancellors as the ACC’s board of directors.
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