What’s Going on in the ACC?

Written By: Sage Rubin, Swish Tribune
The ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) has been in a bit of a predicament the past few years as the once-praised media rights deal they signed in 2016 with ESPN has completely damaged the chances of this conference competing post-2024, I say 2024 is when the conference will stop competing because that is when the SEC and Big Ten’s mega media contracts kick in with ESPN (SEC), Fox (B1G), CBS (B1G), and NBC (B1G). Member schools of these conferences are set to receive around $90-100 million dollars in tv payouts. These same media deals have also become the reason why Texas and Oklahoma are off to the SEC and USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon are all heading to the B1G.

Of course, having seen this, the ACC’s premier programs in FSU and Clemson are trying to find ways to exit this conference. In order to do this, technically before negotiations and a legal battle, they’d have to pay the $120 million dollar exit fee to the ACC and then they’d have to buy their rights back from the Grant of Rights that was signed with ESPN and the ACC. While this sounds simple it really isn’t. Nobody knows how much it costs to leave the GOR, but based on comments that FSU’s administration has made, it seems as though the GOR is beatable.

So while the ACC has to deal with FSU and Clemson being vocal about the financial situation of the conference(more so FSU while Clemson is behind the scenes), they have looked into expansion as a way to bring in some extra revenue as Stanford, Cal, and SMU have been the teams being looked at. All three of these schools have said that they’d forgo 3-5 years of TV revenue to join the conference, but FSU, Clemson, UNC, and NC State won’t vote them in leaving the conference 1 vote short of expanding and allowing these schools into the conference. UNC and NC State are also trying to find a way out of the conference but UNC has been very inconsistent with their messaging on where they stand in the conference leaving NC State to follow suit with whatever UNC does because they’re appearing to be a package deal.

In my opinion, I think that the ACC’s days are numbered and that Florida State and Clemson will find a way out for a conference like the SEC that fits within the region of the conference unlike the B1G and both schools would add significant value. I also think that this could become a long legal battle as FSU and Clemson will try to get their rights back for much cheaper than they would actually owe.