Sources: Cal, Stanford to ACC hits 'significant roadblocks' - ESPN

The ACC presidents met Wednesday night, and the pursuit of Cal and Stanford for conference membership has «hit significant roadblocks,» sources told ESPN.

There had always been long odds the schools would join the conference because there wasn't a significant value add.

SMU also had been bandied about as a potential addition to the ACC, and those conversations aren't headed anywhere, either, sources said.

The ACC presidents had met Tuesday morning about Cal and Stanford, but sources said at the time that the league was «still evaluating» the potential additions, with no decisions expected imminently and another call of the athletic directors to further dig into the finances expected in the near future. The athletic directors had met Monday as part of the initial pair of exploratory calls.

The ACC's deliberations on Cal and Stanford have come amid a fascinating moment, as multiple unhappy schools need to make a decision within the next week about whether they want to leave their league.

There is an Aug. 15 deadline for schools to notify the ACC if they want to leave and change conferences for the 2024 season, a date that has been highlighted because of Florida State's vocal unhappiness about league revenues. (Also complicating matters was that seven schools — FSU, Clemson, Miami, NC State, North Carolina, Virginia and Virginia Tech — were communicating about options outside the ACC earlier this year.)

While the general expectations remain that no school will leave just yet, the mere possibility and FSU's vocal unrest leave the conference in a muddled place.