12/21/24
February 20, 2024
SportsFilter: The Tuesday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
So, does that mean it's easily broken by a member school? It seems if it was, Floriday State would've been out of the conference last year.
posted by NoMich at 10:48 AM on February 20, 2024
How many pages is the document that let the likes of Syracuse in?
posted by beaverboard at 11:07 AM on February 20, 2024
It's not easily broken, but after just one month in litigation the ACC is already talking about a buyout. FSU has a lot of good vectors of attack where the ACC decided things to protect itself against the interest of its member schools.
One is adding SMU, Cal and Stanford, which was done to ensure the ACC didn't fall under 15 schools and trigger a clause where ESPN could renegotiate the TV deal. These schools bring down the average TV viewership of ACC games, which won't help the big schools get closer to financial parity with the SEC and Big 10.
Another is the former ACC commissioner selling the TV rights in a way that gave ESPN subsidiary rights for nothing that it could resell to Raycom Sports. His son was a top executive trying to save that network at the time.
I talk to SMU fans who are telling themselves FSU won't be able to leave short of paying over $500 million. It seems like wishful thinking to me. Every time a big football power decides to leave a conference it succeeds.
posted by rcade at 12:59 PM on February 20, 2024
The talk around the Raleigh area is that the ACC's days are more than likely numbered and everything that the league office is doing (suing FSU to stay in the deal, adding new schools from across the country) is just kicking the can down the road.
posted by NoMich at 01:10 PM on February 20, 2024
It is a shame to see the ACC looking like the next Pac-12. I watched the final football games of that conference in disbelief.
The ESPN/Fox/SEC/Big 10 fatberg are conspiring to turn college football into two superconferences that are like the NFL.
posted by rcade at 01:54 PM on February 20, 2024
If Notre Dame would join the ACC, then it's back on and it would be advantageous to be in a conference as winning one is the easiest way into the expanded NCAA football playoffs.
posted by NoMich at 05:17 PM on February 20, 2024
The original grant of rights that was supposed to be an ironclad lock against schools leaving the ACC is only four pages long:
theathletic.com
I've signed longer contracts to write a book.