The addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse to the ACC aided the conference's negotiation ability and put the ACC within shouting distance of the Big 12 deal, where each team is expected to receive around $20 million annually.
With the new deal, ESPN will televise three Friday night conference football games. Two of these games are guaranteed to be home games for Boston College and Syracuse with a third game reserved for Thanksgiving Friday. In addition to the Friday games, the conference will continue to have a prime time game on ESPN on Labor Day as well as select Thursday night contests. In total, 14 more conference games per year will be televised each year on the ESPN networks.
The deal comes at a time where the ACC is adding an additional two conference games per team in basketball. Each team will now play 18 conference games, increasing the number of games which can be aired on the ESPN platform. Additionally ESPNU will continue to air the Sunday Night ACC Hoops franchise.
This deal is undoubtedly good for the conference as a whole and particularly the smaller-market teams like Wake Forest. While higher-profile football teams will continue to complain about the conference-sharing revenue model, the blunt fact remains that ACC football is not anywhere close to many college football fan's radar.
What are your thoughts? Feel free to discuss with us in the comments or on the main SB Nation story. This is definitely a debate that doesn't have a simple answer, but with the ACC struggling in both football and basketball with the exception of notable outliers in the last few seasons, there had to be a place to start in these negotiations.