Some notes:
-During a regularly scheduled meeting of ACC presidents and chancellors on Tuesday, there were discussions about alternate revenue models, a person briefed on the meeting confirmed. Hours after that meeting, ESPN and Yahoo! Sports both reported that FSU and Clemson would be open to staying in the league if financial adjustments — more like concessions — are made. Gee, how kind of them.
Then there’s the second part to Clemson and FSU’s supposed pitch, reported by ESPN: potentially shortening the league’s grant of rights, possibly to 2030, which aligns with the expiration of the Big Ten and Big 12’s media contracts.
- Nine months into what would almost certainly be a years-long legal battle, the only thing FSU has earned in court is a healthy number of attorney billable hours. The same applies to Clemson’s six-month slog in court. There has been no indication that either school has a legal leg to stand on with its respective arguments — and even if they did, the ACC has made clear it will proverbially kick the can as far as possible, via time-consuming appeals and counter-suits.
-This new revenue proposal — which stemmed from court-mandated mediation in Florida — isn’t too dissimilar from what Clemson and Florida State proposed in the not-so-distant past. (Also, importantly, these discussions are so premature, so early on, that they’re more like … the concept of a plan.) Clearly, though, there wasn’t an appetite for such a structure at the time; the ACC instead settled on its current “success initiative” — which distributes new revenue, mostly from the expanded College Football Playoff, based on schools’ on-field and on-court success — as a way to close the growing revenue gap with the SEC and Big Ten. That initiative, in theory, should have benefited Clemson and Florida State more than anyone, as the league’s preeminent football powers. But when you start 0-3, as the Seminoles have, or when you get your clock cleaned by
Georgia on national TV, as the Tigers did, that pool of “success” dollars suddenly isn’t so guaranteed.
-What reason does the ACC have to acquiesce to any of those schools’ demands, when they’re realistically powerless to change their situation for anywhere from three to 12 more years?
-FSU and Clemson have been, strictly speaking in professional terms, bad partners. They have complained, loudly, about perceived wrongs. They’ve taken “family” business and made it public, messily, with no apparent benefit in sight. They’ve tried to shirk a bill that historically, and presently, many other schools have paid, including Oklahoma, Texas,
USC, and
UCLA in the past three years. And now, perhaps the most ironic sin of all: falling short on the football field, the one thing driving all their behavior in the first place.
This is not a situation where the ACC needs to, or should, extend an olive branch to FSU and Clemson to convince them to stay, for stability’s sake or simply to end the public clash. Now, if you’re commissioner Jim Phillips, in-fighting ain’t a good look. It has, understandably, made the league something of a laughingstock, a constant PR nightmare from which there is no clear solution. And while that may eat at Phillips, you know who else it definitely eats at? ESPN… which, yes, is probably coming into that February 2025 “look-in” with some serious questions.
-The ACC holds every ounce of leverage, and Clemson and FSU saying they’ll stay in the league
only under their terms is the ultimate walk-back, a desperation play. Which in turn means if the ACC goes along, it’s only offering those schools the dollar-lined off-ramp they’re desperately seeking.