The Legacy Conference (LC) — ACC/Big 12 Merger Proposal

The case for merging: with the Protect College Sports Act poised to lock conference structures in place, the ACC and Big 12 are on track to be permanently relegated to second-tier status. Neither conference currently has anything resembling the SEC's or Big Ten's national media revenue-sharing footprint, and once realignment is frozen by statute, that revenue gap freezes with it — there's no future expansion or poaching move left to close it. Merging into one 38-team league with a single unified TV contract is the last real chance either conference has to negotiate media rights at a scale competitive with the Power Two before the door closes for good.

Structure:

• 38 teams, 4 divisions (three at 9 teams, one at 10)
• Single governing body — one commissioner's office, one board of governors (38 ADs + a 12-person executive committee, 3 per division)
• One unified national media rights deal, split equally per school regardless of division or historical brand (local/tier-3 rights stay school-controlled)
• 11 conference games per team; the 12th slot is the open non-conference game described above
• Schools retain the right to sell their own TV rights for their one open non-conference game. This is the release valve for the bigger programs: a Florida State, Clemson, or Miami can sell that single game to a network or streamer on the open market for a premium payout on top of their equal conference share, while every school still gets full value from the pooled conference package for the other 11 games.
• Championship game: the two highest CFP-ranked division champions meet for the LC title, with a bonus revenue pool paid out to the two participants on top of their equal base share.
• CFP access: all 4 division champions get an automatic playoff bid if ranked in the CFP top 25. A champion that misses the top 25 forfeits its bid to the highest-ranked LC at-large team instead — that at-large team is still selected by the committee on its own merits, but the conference is guaranteed 4 total CFP slots any time it has 4 schools ranked in the top 25
• The conference retains the flexibility to add up to 2 additional members, for a total of 40 schools, at any time for up-and-coming programs that strengthen the league.

Divisions:

• ACC (9): Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, NC State, North Carolina, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest
• Metro (9+1): Boston College, Cincinnati, Louisville, Miami, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, UCF, UConn, West Virginia — Notre Dame is independent for football but required to play 10 conference games a year and retains TV rights to its additional 2 games.
• Big 12 (10): Baylor, Colorado, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, SMU, TCU, Texas Tech
• Pacific (9): Arizona, Arizona State, Boise State, BYU, Cal, Oregon State, Stanford, Utah, Washington State