forums

FSU LIVE BOT Meeting - Livestream link

Advertisement
scane said:
I knew Swofford did an incompetent job with the media rights agreement, but they extended the grant of rights to 2036 while simultaneously giving ESPN a 2027 opt out?! It probably didn’t seem likely in 2016, but given the current deteriorating media rights landscape….
Click to expand...
Just to have John Swofford and his kissing UNC Cousin (and Coke addict) John Skipper deposed and (even better) on the stand would be worth the million$ expended. Traitor Dan LeBastard would scream to high heaven his best buddy Skipper being exposed as a con man...Hmm, peas in a pod?
 
Advertisement
RozayCane said:
Them boys better be able to get out, our they are digging themselves a deep and steep hole.

They can forget about getting any calls, and can kiss the playoffs goodbye. SEC is basically owned by ESPN, so they won’t want them.

And you want to **** off Micky Mouse? 😂
Click to expand...
No turning back now. FSU Will either come out smelling like a rose or step in the proverbial bucket of **** and Miami can sit back and observe it all.
 
pacusmc said:
That law firm ain’t taking an L.
It’s massive, powerful, (pause) and as well connected as any in the nation.
Click to expand...

LOL.

Several schools, including UM, Duke, and UNC have had their top lawyers in NY look at this for months. Guys at Latham and some at Skadden. And now we want to believe that some Tallahassee yokel lawyer with a degree from FSU is the guy that finally cracked the case??

Call me skeptical.

But go ahead ….
 
RedSquare said:
LOL.

Several schools, including UM, Duke, and UNC have had their top lawyers in NY look at this for months. Guys at Latham and some at Skadden. And now we want to believe that some Tallahassee yokel lawyer with a degree from FSU is the guy that finally cracked the case??

Call me skeptical.

But go ahead ….
Click to expand...
That law firm is one of the top grossing law firms in the world, not the the United States, the world.
It has over 2000 lawyers worldwide. It’s one of the biggest law firms in the United States.
Its revenue for 2022 was over $2 billion.
Yes, just like a lot of law firms they are willing to take money from a client. But I’m sure that in a high profile case they don’t want to take the L.

Edit: Aren’t Duke and UNC part of that Tobacco Road mafia they call the acc.
 
Last edited:
Advertisement
Ispyin said:
Honestly they are doing hero’s work today for all of the schools that want to leave. Even if they are crybabies

We want them to win this and they are painting a horrible view of acc incompetence and making an argument about how the penalty for leaving may be an unreasonable and thus unenforceable penalty when compared to the harm done. That seems actually on point. Have been in other media situations where this came up and won. It’s a leap but an example in California was around length of artist music recording contracts.

Looking forward to real lawyers (not biz dev peeps like me that have a lot of legal and contract experience but always with lawyers in tow) on the board commenting, but my initial reaction is that there may be more of a case here than I thought, especially when it is filed in Florida courts

Not sure about the specific lawyer or branch involved but certainly Greenberg Traurig is no joke in my experience generally. Again others here will have much more to add.

Thought they did a good job presenting the facts and the remedy to to board personally.
Click to expand...


It's all good, you're doing the lord's work here.

I've said this before, but you have two "levels" of legal analysis that a lot of people tend to do on here.

First, you have the Northern Virginia brain-dead analysis where someone says "hey, the GOR is an assignment, and it uses all the right words, and it looks like everyone signed it, therefore it must be valid."

Then you have the more thoughtful, deeper, and PUBLIC-POLICY oriented analysis which looks to thew bigger picture and bigger issues, which is what you are tracking.

As I have ALWAYS maintained, there are several structural and multi-agreement flaws with the GOR:

1. We ALL KNOW that the financial penalty of the GOR has ALWAYS been a disguised super-penalty for leaving the conference, generally. It has NEVER been a true "well, here is the impact to ESPN and/or the ACC to make them whole JUST FOR THE MEDIA RIGHTS piece". So at its core, the GOR has always been a fraudelent document intended to do fraudulent things. Otherwise, US legal precedent and contract law cases have made it clear that you CANNOT use a second document to impose an ADDITIONAL penalty for exit that is already contemplated in a "constitution/by-laws" document.

2. The GOR has ALWAYS been fatally-flawed when it comes to the rationale and calculation of "damages". It is brutally vague. It woulda/shoulda/coulda been the PERFECT PLACE to use liquidated damages, which are particularly helpful when "damages" are otherwise difficult to quantify and calculate. In and of itself, it would be permissible to have some kind of WELL-DEFINED liquidated damages related to exiting a media rights contract early. Setting aside my next point for now (in that the TV contract itself should already cover such damages anyhow), the reality is that imposing a MASSIVE Willy Wonka ("you get NOTHING") or Michael Corleone ("Senator, you can have my answer now, my offer is this, nothing, not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you put up personally") penalty is not something that courts can or like to impose, regardless of what the contract says. On the other hand, I've rarely seen a court NOT impose agreed-upon liquidated damages.

3. The GOR has ALWAYS been unnecessary in light of having TV contracts to cover all of the relevant agreements anyhow. Media rights agreements have existed LONG before GORs were invented. Somehow...SOMEHOW...the conferences figured out a way to negotiate and sign on behalf of the member schools WITHOUT the invention of the GOR. Simply stated, for its relatively short duration, the GOR has ALWAYS been a sledgehammer that both the conferences and networks use to SCARE members into staying. There is no legal need to grant rights to a conference, so that the conference can sell the rights to a network. It's stupid. We don't have thousands of shareholders members of the conference that would make separate signatory pages problematic. YOU JUST ******* PUT RIGHTS LANGUAGE INTO THE TV CONTRACT and then have BOTH the conference AND the separate members sign. See how easy that was? ******* ponderous, man. ******* ponderous.

4. Finally, the GOR is functioning IN THIS SITUATION as a covenant-not-to-compete. Sure, Northern Virginia is going to tell you about all the "assignment" contracts he drafts and all the "enforceability" memos he writes. **** all that ****. The reality is very simple. If you sign a 20 year agreement, even though in all other regards there are documents that allow you to exit and common sense ways to allow you to compute and pay damages...NOPE...we are going to use the GOR as a covenant-not-to-compete. You have NO MEDIA RIGHTS to transfer to another conference. AND we are not going to pay you. So you're double-****ed, and all under the FRAUDULENT guise of "hey, we needed a rights agreement to come to your schools and stadiums to film ****". This is a covenant-not-to-compete with a 20-year (max) timeframe and a 25,000 mile distance (circumference of the earth).

And, really, that's what the analysis should have ALWAYS focused on, and then you find the legal language to describe the grounds for non-enforcement. It's just that simple. The ACC-ESPN Mafia are telling us that we can't do **** for the next 13 years, we have NO MEDIA RIGHTS to sell, and we will get NO MONEY from anyone, all because we OTHERWISE want to exert the simple right to leave the conference.

**** all that.

I hope Miami joins F$U as a co-litigant.
 
Last edited:
Advertisement
RedSquare said:
LOL.

Several schools, including UM, Duke, and UNC have had their top lawyers in NY look at this for months. Guys at Latham and some at Skadden. And now we want to believe that some Tallahassee yokel lawyer with a degree from FSU is the guy that finally cracked the case??

Call me skeptical.

But go ahead ….
Click to expand...
Keep in mind, as with most things in life, location matters. This suit will be decided by a local judge who is likely appointed.
 
Advertisement
canecane232323 said:
The increasing penalty for leaving from 0$ (acc constitution) in 2010 to 572$ million in 2023 (penalty and gor estimate) is huge. Not only are there antitrust arguments, but the lack of consideration for ACC schools with that increase is glaring. Hard to defend such a one sided penalty with no new benefit for the schools. The media revenue have stayed the same since 2012. I like their chances especially in Florida courts.
Click to expand...


A Constitutionally-stated fixed-fee exit penalty is fine.

But the secondary GOR penalty is BULL**** and should be destroyed. Should never be enforced.
 
Advertisement
Back
Top