Challenge for the ACC: Convince Florida State and Clemson to stay
By: Dan Wetzel - Yahoo! SportsFor Florida State and Clemson — litigious twins of ACC dissolution — this is an unquestioned victory.
For the ACC — battling back and trying to hang on — this is a measure of one also, temporarily, perhaps, but isn’t everything these days in college athletes?
A deal between the two sides was officially reached and ratified on Tuesday, ending a strange scenario where two of the highest-profile members of a college athletic conference tried to sue the conference so they could no longer be a part of said conference.
They — Florida State and Clemson — likely will remain members … for now. At least they know how much it will cost going forward to bail — especially by the start of the next decade when media rights negotiations kick up for the Big Ten and Big 12, which might reignite conference realignment.
That’s the part that remains strained — a solution that placates the biggest brands over the less popular ones in an effort to temporarily halt their wandering eyes. Florida State has been arguing for such a deal for years now.
“This settlement allows Clemson to remain nationally competitive at the highest levels and makes our conference stronger,” said Clemson president Jim Clements.
For the time being at least.
This is modern college athletics, the latest turn in the endless cycle of conference realignment that, more than NIL, more than the transfer portal, more than all these lost lawsuits, has upended how college sports, driven by football, is played.
The Atlantic Coast Conference, after all, is 17 schools strong, including outposts in Dallas and the Bay Area that, geography experts might note, are nowhere near the Atlantic Coast, let alone the league’s Tobacco Road ancestral roots.
And yet it is newcomers Cal, Stanford and SMU — not to mention Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Syracuse — that need to give up competitive advantages (or at least lots of revenue shares) to Clemson (member since 1953) and FSU (member since 1991) just to preserve a safe harbor for the next half decade or so.
The deal here is pretty simple. The ACC will dole out a portion of revenue based on the five-year average of each school’s television audience. The more popular the team — or opponent, or beneficial time slot and network — the more money.
It could be a $20 million difference between the top and the bottom. Clemson and Florida State have those big fan bases, not to mention (along with Miami) the opportunity to play ratings juggernaut Notre Dame two out of every three years.
The extra money will help bridge the gap between ACC television rights and the more substantial payouts of the SEC and Big Ten. That gives Clemson and Florida State a fighting chance on a national level in terms of revenue.
Maybe it’ll deliver. One of college sports' greatest tricks is getting fans to root for money, to cheer checks. The sky is perpetually falling, the administrators will tell you, so media rights payouts (often wasted buying out bad coaching contracts) are essential. Or so they want you to believe.
It assures nothing, of course. Purdue, of the Big Ten, has always gotten a bigger share of conference revenue than Clemson, but it’s the Tigers who are the national power and modern-era two-time national champs.
And Florida State’s athletic expenditures are annually among the top 10-15 nationally … yet the team finished 2-10 in football last year. So who knows?
As for the rest of the ACC that has to battle these two — not to mention Miami and North Carolina and other bigger programs — getting less money is just the latest challenge. In fairness, they’ve been getting carried for years, often based on equally absurd criteria.
Boston College, for example, was brought into the ACC in 2005 in large part because it could help "deliver" the Boston television market (ninth largest in America). That would make sense if they were the Patriots or Celtics, but the Eagles are not. Two decades later, they remain a sporting afterthought in their hometown.
So maybe this is a fair correction.
Mostly this is the best the ACC could do. Unequal revenue shares is not ideal, but it’s better than the alternative. Ask the Pac-12.
Part of this deal sets in ink what it will cost any team to leave the league early and regain their so-called “grant of rights” or ability to sell their games to a media outlet. By the 2030-31 academic year, it is just $75 million, a number that Clemson and FSU will likely find palatable if they have the chance to bounce.
They could even save up their additional revenue between now and then to pay for it.
Right now, neither the SEC nor Big Ten has offered any inclination they want to expand again — although maybe that would change if Clemson or Florida State or North Carolina was truly available. In half a decade though, that will likely be different ... and now the path to freedom awaits.
Five years is a long time in college athletics, of course. So what the landscape looks like then, or how conferences want to be aligned, is unpredictable.
The ACC has that amount of time to make staying put the best option. It isn’t great, but it is more appealing than endless litigation against some of your own schools.
For now, there is peace and stability in the ACC. For now.
