The ACC, for better or worse – OK, worse – is stuck where it is with its TV deal

Florida State athletics director Michael Alford already isn’t happy that ACC schools are bringing in $30 million less than rivals in the Big Ten and SEC.

But now the idea that UCF is going to be making more money in the Big 12, now, that’s over the line.

“If you look at the revenue projections, they should have a better agreement than we have by going out to market,” Alford said, alluding to how the Big 12, which is adding UCF as a member, will have its media right deal is up for renegotiation after the 2030-31 season, while the ACC is locked in what is now a below-market-rate deal with ESPN through 2036.

“That means there’s going to be another school in the state that’s going to have a better agreement than Miami and us. And that’s just not acceptable to us,” Alford said, and he’s right, it shouldn’t be acceptable to him or to anybody in the ACC, which locked itself into a 20-year deal with ESPN in 2016 that has at least kept the conference together, but at costs that are becoming onerous.

We’re not even close to being to where this is going to get really bad yet, basically, and we’re already seeing how the rich getting richer, and the ACC staying where it is, is leaving the ACC further and further behind.

The conference hasn’t had a team (read: Clemson) in the College Football Playoff the past two seasons, and the ACC has been getting the shaft at the expense of the Big Ten and SEC in NCAA Tournament bids.

It’s rich that it’s FSU’s athletics director who complains the most publicly about this. This Alford guy seems to think Bobby Bowden is still the football coach or something.

Reality check is that Florida State hasn’t been a value to the conference for years, and that 10-3 record in 2022 that has folks down that way all in a lather would have been a down year in the Bowden and early Jimbo Fisher years.

The ACC is still Clemson in football, and Duke-Carolina (apologies to my home base and alma mater, UVA) in hoops, in terms of how the money is made.

And as far as that goes, Clemson is coming back to the pack, Carolina has a coach that may or may not pan out, and no offense to Jon Scheyer, but he ain’t Coach K.

And ESPN, the broadcast partner, isn’t doing all that well, just recently going through several more rounds of layoffs to try to cut costs given the uncomfortable reality of cord-cutting impacting the bottom line at the Worldwide Leader.

No way ESPN will just up and offer to renegotiate the ACC TV deal out of the goodness of its heart.

Also, no way the ACC just up and lets its member schools out of the grant-of-media-rights deal that binds them together through 2036.

So, sorry, Mike Alford, but, we’re stuck where we are for another 13 years.