Behind the Scenes Look at ACC as Stanford and Cal Rejected

The potential move of Stanford and Cal to the Atlantic Coast Conference -- an interesting plan on paper to bring together academically elite schools but a dubious geographic proposition -- appears dead for now. ESPN.com's Andrea Adelson spoke to various ACC school officials and reports on some of the apparent reasons the plan failed. Note, however, that inviting Stanford and Cal into the ACC failed by only one vote, so perhaps the issue will be revisited at some point.

Pac 12 Shrinks with Departures to Big Ten and Big 12

The Pac 12 is now down to four schools, as Washington and Oregon have joined the Big Ten and Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah have followed Colorado's lead and departed for the Big 12. The only remaining Pac 12 programs currently are Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, and Washington State. 

The new configurations of the Big Ten and Big 12, respectively, appear below, with the former Pac 12 schools underlined.

With Washington and Oregon joining UCLA and USC in their move to the Big Ten, these four schools will get to stay on the West Coast for some of their conference road games, rather than having to travel to the Midwest and East Coast for nearly all of them.

Meanwhile, the addition of the two Arizona schools, Utah, and Colorado really establishes the Big 12 (which now has 16 teams) as the conference of the American Southwest. It also puts Utah and BYU back in the same conference to resume their "Holy War" rivalry. 

Going back to Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, and Washington State, observers have suggested some sort of merger or absorption of teams between the Mountain West (featuring schools such as San Diego State, Fresno State, Nevada, UNLV, and Boise State) and the depleted Pac. I'll revisit the situation of these schools when new realignment plans start to emerge.