Florida State has wanted out of the ACC for a while. That it was snubbed by the College Football Playoff despite being the conference’s undefeated champion validated every FSU gripe/fear.
Gripe No. 1: The ACC is stuck with an antiquated media deal that leaves every member but especially the football-first schools earning dimes on the dollar.
Gripe No. 2: The media deal extends into perpetuity. (Slight exaggeration – it lapses in 2036 – but only slight.)
Gripe No. 3: The ACC’s football stock had fallen so far – this despite the league taking more national titles in the CFP era than the Big Ten/Big 12/Pac-12 combined – that it was begging to snubbed.
That the snub was delivered by a CFP committee chaired by an ACC athletic director heightened the indignity. That CFP-airer ESPN expressed little outrage beyond “too bad/so sad” threw gasoline on the fire. That CFP chief Bill Hancock labeled the ACC “a so-called Power 5 conference” was taken by FSU as the quiet part spoken aloud.
On Thursday, Florida State’s board of trustees moved to allow its lawyers to mount a legal challenge the ACC’s grant of rights. “We have reached a crossroads,” board chair Peter Collins said. “We’re locked into a deteriorating media rights agreement.”
To leave the ACC, Collins said, carries “Draconian withdrawal penalties.” That’s a reference to the grant of media rights, which was former commissioner John Swofford’s instrument for keeping membership intact at a time when his seemed the league most apt to be raided. It means any exiting school that must hand TV money from its new conference to its old one for the length of the rights contract, meaning 2036.
Like all other ACC members, FSU signed the agreement. For the benefit of the Zoom audience, the school’s lead attorney showed a slide indicating that leaving the league would cost $572 million. Yow.
“We have exhausted all possible remedies,” the board was told, which may or may not be true. Beyond dispute is that the Seminoles have had enough of the ACC and what it believes is the league’s second-rate status with corporate partner ESPN. (Don’t get the Seminoles started on the disparity between the respective SEC and ACC networks.)
It was inevitable that an ACC school would test the GOR in court. Florida State – whose AD expressed displeasure with the conference last summer – always figured to be first in line. That the Seminoles just went 13-0 and got stuck in a consolation bowl meant that what would have happened eventually is happening now.
“This less about the events of the past two weeks than the actions of the conference over the past 10 years,” Collins said. He noted that the ACC’s addition of Stanford, Cal and SMU will bring “no value” – at least in terms of big-time football – to the league. He mentioned that the conference is so defensive about its media rights that documentation is kept “under lock and key” at the ACC office.
It must be noted that FSU doesn’t want to leave at any price. It wants to leave without paying a $572M penalty to which it is, as of now, contractually obliged. The ACC could opt to negotiate a severance at lesser cost – generally speaking, having a disgruntled member isn’t great for communal harmony – but the ACC might also believe that without Florida State there’d be no ACC.
It has been reported that six other schools – Clemson, Miami, North Carolina, N.C. State, Virginia and Virginia Tech – are similarly dissatisfied with the ACC’s pay structure. If FSU leaves without paying its full grant of rights, the league could face an exodus of Pac-12 proportions.
We say again: It’s unclear where Florida State would go. The Big Ten mightn’t be a fit. The Big 12 mightn’t be big enough. The SEC might consider itself too big. But if FSU is followed by Clemson/Miami/UNC ... well, that’s a whole ’nother ballgame.
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