Officials at Clemson and Florida State are coming to the realization that their efforts to sue their way out of the ACC and into a new conference without actually having an invitation to a new conference aren’t going to work out for them.
This is the backdrop for the news emerging in the past couple of days that the schools and the ACC are apparently working on yet another scheme that would give the haves a chance at a bigger slice of the conference’s TV money.
There seems to be momentum toward creating a separate pot of TV revenues based on media value metrics, a euphemistic way of saying, based on your TV viewer numbers.
Kick in the shins here to FSU: they won’t want this to be based on their 2024 TV viewer numbers, which are swirling in the toilet bowl with their 0-3 start, against a schedule of Georgia Tech, Boston College and Memphis.
The reporting floating into the ether on this also has it that the ACC is considering shortening the end date on the school’s grants of media rights, which currently extend into 2036, but I’m not buying that as being anything other than a bargaining chip, if it’s even that, and being discussed at all.
The reason I say that: Clemson and Florida State have no leverage, other than the money they’re wasting, and in the process forcing the conference to waste, on lawsuits that are not going to be decided in their favor, if they seem through years of wrangling over jurisdiction and discovery through to an eventual trial.
That would seem to be the only thing that would motivate the other conference members to even talk with the higher-ups at Clemson and Florida State about their obviously frivolous lawsuits – to throw them a face-saving bone that allows the leaders at those schools to declare victory so that everybody can move on.
Nothing from this stupid distraction does anything to resolve the bigger issue at hand for the ACC and its member schools: that the new TV deals for the Big 10 and SEC are paying those conferences and member schools considerably more than what the ACC and its members have access to under their current ESPN deal, which has 12 years left on it.
We keep hearing about ESPN having a February 2025 deadline to decide on its interest in the last 10 years of the TV deal, which, you can bank on this: ESPN is going to exercise its option for the last 10 years of the TV deal, because it is making gobs of money under the terms of the deal, given the realities of the current marketplace.
And just to get this out there: ESPN would, presumably, have to sign off on any reduction in the length of the grants of media rights, and to be clear, that ain’t going to happen.
Best-case scenario for Clemson and FSU out of this, then: as long as they’re not getting blown out by Georgia or choking at home against the AAC, they can make a few more bucks by winning and having people stay with their games on Saturdays.
That’s it.
And, no, none of this will do anything to lure Notre Dame into being a football member, so, that one is still out of the equation.
Video: The ACC, Clemson and Florida State
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Chris Graham
