About those grants of media rights: They’re the reason the ACC is still here

How strong, legally, are those grants of media rights from ACC member schools to the league that seem to be constituting the thread holding the league together?

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is ready for you.

“People talked about Oklahoma and Texas leaving immediately. I think that’s pretty well-stated now that that’s not the case. They’re going to wait until their grants of rights is over. Listening to UCLA and USC at the end of June, June 30th, and subsequent days after, they clearly are going to stay in the PAC-12 until their grant of rights is over,” Phillips told reporters at the 2022 ACC Kickoff on Wednesday

“You can follow the logic there,” Phillips said. “I would think that the significance of what that would mean, the television rights that the conference owns as well as a nine-figure financial penalty, I think it holds, but your guess is as good as mine.”

ACC schools thinking about bolting would be staring down the barrel of a $120 million exit fee and another $400 million to $500 million in lost media rights, depending on when a school would want to and then be able to leave the conference.

That’s obviously a grossly prohibitive amount of money, which was the point behind inserting that language into the new deal the ACC and its schools signed with ESPN back in 2016.

Keep that in mind when your favorite blogger or podcast gabber tells you that he has sources telling you that this school or that one is talking to the SEC or Big Ten.

Even if the SEC or Big Ten were interested in an ACC school, and there’s neither no evidence nor any conventional wisdom that they would be, neither would be likely to extend a formal or even informal invitation on the hope that a potential ACC member would be able to just walk away, or fight its way out through a legal challenge that would likely drag out multiple years.

Now that we’re all on the same page there, Phillips, at least publicly, isn’t conceding that he’s sensing anything from school and university presidents and ADs other than, we’re all in this together.

“I love our 15 schools, and I’m confident in us staying together. That’s all I’ve heard in all the calls that we’ve had. We want to work together to try to provide more resources to our student-athletes, so we’re all on the same page,” Phillips said.

The focus, then, isn’t on keeping the conference together, because the grants of media rights are keeping the ACC together, for good or bad.

No, the attention is on figuring out a way for the member schools to be able to bring in closer to what their peers in the SEC and Big Ten are getting from their TV deals.

The new Power 2 are paying out roughly $25 million more per school per year than what the ACC is paying out to its schools.

That gap is expected to grow to the $50 million to $55 million range by 2030.

“Everything is on the table. We understand what that means,” Phillips said. “We understand what that revenue means moving forward, but I will also say, as I look at the next few years, I like where we’re going. But, again, the window is through ’36, so we’re going to have to address it, no question.”