SMU Mustangs Raise $100M in 1 Week to Support Move to ACC amid Conference Realignment

SMU is joining the Atlantic Coast Conference alongside Cal and Stanford in advance of the 2024-25 athletic sports season, and the university announced it has raised $100 million in one week in support the school's big move.

Per the release, the commitments are via "a group of thirty donors that includes trustees and key donors," both alumni and non-alumni.

SMU is making the move from the American Athletic Conference, where it has been since 2013.

SMU's move has also led to increased interest in the men's basketball and football programs. Per the release, tickets sales for the hoops team rose 30 percent in the last week. In addition, the school has sold hundreds of new football season tickets.

It's a huge move for a school that used to be a college football powerhouse in the 1980s. No team was better than SMU from 1980-1984, when it went 49-9-1, good enough for the Division I-A's top record during that time.

However, SMU was hit with the death penalty in the late 1980s for repeated NCAA violations. It took a long time for the football program to recover, but it's rebounded nicely since then and found a good home in the AAC.

Now the program is off to one of the top four conferences in college sports alongside the Big Ten, SEC and Big 12. It joins a conference that goes coast to coast now from Boston to the Bay Area.

The ACC will have 18 schools with the addition of SMU, Cal and Stanford, 17 of which will be playing football in the conference (Notre Dame being an exception as an independent).