For the first time in nearly two years, the ACC Kickoff began with the conference not engaged in a lawsuit with its top two football brands, Clemson and Florida State.
The conference and the two schools resolved their legal squabble in late May with a settlement that redistributes revenue among conference teams and more clearly defines the requirements for leaving the league.
Gone are the days when Boston College receives the same payout that Clemson and FSU receive.
Welcome to the new world of “you get what you earn” mentality of the ACC.
So, the ACC finally has stability, right?
Far from it.
The only stability the conference has is that it now has an expiration date.
Likely 2030, if not before.
However, if you listened to ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips ramble for nearly an hour at the ACC Kickoff on Tuesday, the spin was completely different.
I wonder if Phillips even bothered to read the content of the settlement agreement.
From what I have read, the agreement provides a contractual path for member schools to leave.
Clemson and FSU spent months in court challenging the Grant of Rights, only to discover this: it’s inescapable without paying the enormous exit fee.
The GOR was well written and signed off by every school in the conference.
Why 2030?
Timing tells the story here.
Exit fees for ACC schools wanting to jump ship drop to $75 million in 2030, coincidentally, around the time the Big Ten and SEC media rights can be renegotiated.
Hello, Super League.
Five years is ample time to structure the new world order of college football, and the ACC settlement agreement provided just that.
Got to give Dr. Phillips some credit: he did as well as he could when speaking positive about the conference.
Until he essentially said that ACC men’s basketball needed to step up, and that football can’t go 2-11 in bowl season.
Your two most significant revenue sources stink, but other than that.
Phillips did rule with an iron-clad fist on two other subjects.
Court-storming and field-storming will result in substantial fines, and every coach in men’s and women’s basketball and football will now be required to submit an injury report two days before each game.
Initially, when I heard this, this thought came to mind: didn’t Bill Belichick, the new head coach at UNC, have Tom Brady listed as questionable for every game?
Talk about grasping for straws.
Now back to the ACC and that settlement agreement:
The agreement stipulates that six or more schools can leave a single sport to join other non-conference institutions.
Does this mean that ACC schools could join the SEC or Big Ten in football only while preserving what we currently have in place regarding ACC Basketball?
Possibly.
If so, the Super League probability gets even stronger.
Here’s another twist regarding the new revenue distribution the ACC now has in place with its member schools.
It might create some huge ripples in the Big Ten and SEC.
Is the Ohio State AD going to be OK with getting the same revenue money as Rutgers or Maryland?
How about down south in SEC country?
What if SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey has to explain to Georgia why they get the same as conference bottom-feeder Vanderbilt, but schools in the ACC, like Clemson, triple their revenue from ACC doormat Boston College?
Yep, the ACC just opened a massive can of worms.
While the ACC is sinking, they may have just taken a piece of the Big 10 and SEC with them.
Give the ACC credit for this: they saw the writing on the wall, and unlike the Pac-12, made sure they weren’t blindsided.
The Super League structure in college football is no longer a possibility; it’s now well under construction.
The ACC won’t be part of the new look of college football, but it has certainly changed the way schools will be paid.
I almost felt sorry for Jim Phillips on Tuesday.
He reminded me of the captain of the Titanic.
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