ACC pocket book: Cal, Stanford prepared for cross-country journeys

As the Pac-12 Conference fell apart in summer 2023, a lifeline came for San Francisco Bay Area institutions Cal and Stanford from an unlikely destination: the Atlantic Coast Conference.

On Tuesday, the Golden Bears and Cardinal football programs received formal introductions to their cross-country conference mates during ACC media days in Charlotte, N.C.

Cal coach Justin Wilcox was asked about his team’s “wild” schedule, in which the Golden Bears will travel to Auburn in Week 2 before flying 2,200-plus miles to Tallahassee just two weeks later to take on Florida State in ACC play.

“If you would have asked me two or three years ago, I probably wouldn’t have thought that,” said Wilcox, entering his eighth season at the helm.

Wilcox’s statement could be classified as the biggest understatement of college football’s media-day season. But it also underscores the dramatic changes to the sport in less than 12 months — changes that may well be still ongoing.

Court rooms and TV network board rooms have perhaps overshadowed action on the football field. Both Cal’s Wilcox and Stanford head coach Troy Taylor turned their attention Tuesday away from the peculiarity of sharing a conference with counterparts three time zones to the East, instead touting the league’s level of play.

“We’re just excited and really grateful to be in this conference, to play against great teams,” said Taylor, entering his second year leading the Cardinal. “… To be in the ACC, to be here with y’all, it’s an important part of who we are.”

Stanford, one of the nation’s premier programs in the 2010s, embarks on 2024 looking to snap out of a recent funk that produced three straight 3-9 finishes. Cal, meanwhile, jumps into the ACC fray boasting one of the top offensive weapons in the nation with running back Jaydn Ott.

Ott followed an 897-yard, eight-touchdown freshman season with 1,315 yards rushing and 12 touchdowns, and another two scores via receptions in 2023. He enters the 2024 campaign 15 rushing touchdowns shy of tying Russell White for the program’s career record, and he’s only 1,156 yards away from passing White’s career yardage mark of 3,367.

“That’s an awesome feeling,” Ott said of continuing his pursuit of history in the ACC. “Being able to play some new competition, the ACC has a lot of rich history. These are some teams that I watched growing up. I also have some buddies and family (in the conference’s regional footprint). My cousin D.J. (Uiagalelei), he’s playing at Florida State. We’ll see him again this year.”

–Day 1 of ACC media days on Monday featured the introduction of Dallas-based SMU, which joins Cal and Stanford as newcomers to the league. Monday’s session also included ACC commissioner Jim Phillips fielding questions about conference cornerstone members Clemson and Florida State filing lawsuits against the league’s grant of rights and exit fees.

“There isn’t a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t spend some time on the legal cases,” Phillips said on Monday. “We have proven that you have to move forward even with these types of distractions and really important issues that are part of your daily lives.”

–Florida State heads into the new season trying to move on from being famously snubbed from the 2023 College Football Playoff in the wake of a late-season injury to quarterback Jordan Travis.

Alabama received the fourth and final playoff berth ahead of the unbeaten ACC champion Seminoles, who were promptly blown out by Georgia 63-3 in the Orange Bowl after many Florida State players opted out of the game.

“I tell people all the time, if we’d have lost the (ACC) championship game, I think a majority of those guys would’ve played,” coach Mike Norvell told ESPN. “It was a tough situation to have to go through.”

It’s a snub Seminoles players won’t soon forget, but Travis and others have graduated or moved on to the NFL, and the 2024 roster is setting out to write history of their own.

“All that (playoff) stuff is over with now and we have a whole new team to worry about,” offensive lineman Darius Washington told ESPN. “What happened last year hurt us, but if we keep whining about it now, it ain’t going to (help us).”

–Field Level Media