Florida State’s court show was a lot of noise, but the Seminoles will have to leave the ACC in the end.
We knew Florida State wouldn’t be in the ACC in 2036 because of how loud it has been lately. But what happened at the streamed board from regents meeting on Friday—FSU suing its own conference in a way that has never been done before—was bad off-Broadway theater.
Of course, that bluster makes more sense now. Florida State is trying to get out of a grant of rights agreement that it signed or re-signed in good faith.
Nevertheless, that’s not important when the school’s money is at stake. Anyone who saw FSU flex on Friday was reminded that it is the largest brand in the ACC.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not windy. It’s kind of like how things work in Florida. A former Seminoles quarterback and current FSU governor, Drew Weatherford, said, “The system is broken.” “This was us looking to protect ourselves.”
We knew that Florida State didn’t want to be in the ACC. We now know some of its plans to reach that goal. We also know it will be messy, cost a lot, and take years.
We also knew that FSU probably wouldn’t be a part of the ACC in 13 years, if the ACC is still around that long. As long as nothing changes right away, the school should be able to buy itself out by 2030.
Flo State has never seemed to belong in the Atlantic Coast Conference. A football school in a league that has been known for basketball skills for a long time.
Thus now the Seminoles want to leave. It’s natural that couples will get divorced, but the split is not friendly.
The first shots were fired on Friday when the Florida State board of trustees decided to start legal proceedings to leave the ACC without having to pay a huge fee.
This shows how bad this fight is going to be. It’s not a surprise, since both sides have a lot at stake.
The ACC has promised to keep Florida State on its end of the deal over TV rights. This would mean that the Seminoles would have to pay a huge amount of money—the school’s lawyer put the amount at $572 million—just to get out of the deal.
But if the Seminoles succeed in identifying a more realistic way forward, maybe thanks to a wise court decision, it could send the Atlantic Coast Conference into the same downward spiral that quickly wiped out the legendary Pac-12 from the big college scene.
This is because Clemson and North Carolina voted with Florida State against the ACC taking to Pac-12 refugees from Stanford and California, which are way out on the Pacific coast, along with Dallas-based SMU for no clear reason other than making it easier to meet up with the newcomers from far away.
It looks like Florida State being left toward of the four-team College Football Playoff was the last straw in a relationship that the has been rocky for years. It was the first time a major conference winner with a perfect 13-0 record had been passed over.
The ACC quickly responded by saying that Florida State freely agreed to a deal in 2016 that gave the league control of media rights until 2036.
The Southeastern College and the Big 12 quickly got much better TV deals, which made that deal quickly obsolete. But the ACC says a deal is a deal.
“This agreement has been good for all universities; they have received millions of dollars in income, and neither Florida State nor any other school has ever questioned its legitimacy,” the ACC said in a statement.
” This is very disappointing that the FSU has decided to take this unprecedented and overreaching stance.”
In Florida State’s legal case, one thing that could help is that the current deal with ESPN only lasts until 2027, while the league controls TV rights until 2036.
The network can use a nine-year option, but the Seminoles will tell the court that they shouldn’t have to sign a deal that doesn’t promise anything.