Florida State renews its bid to leave the ACC following the CFP disappointment.
The board of trustees at Florida State University will meet on Friday morning to examine the university’s “long-term athletics future,” according to ESPN’s Andrea Adelson.
Adelson writes that any decision to quit the ACC would be met with litigation, with one league athletic director remarking in 2022, “There would be a hell of a court fight, I will tell you that.”
According to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, university lawyers are looking for methods to get out of “the grant of rights, a legal document between the ACC, its members, and TV partner ESPN binding one another together through the 2035-36 academic year.”
Florida State expressed its discontent with the ACC earlier this year, citing the ACC’s media rights deal with ESPN, which is significantly less lucrative than the arrangements negotiated by the Big Ten and SEC.
The ACC changed its payout structure to benefit its top teams, including Florida State, but the school’s failure to qualify for the College Football Playoff has rekindled its interest in leaving the conference.
A departure would be too expensive.
According to Mr. Adelson, “Any school that wants to leave the ACC would have to pay an exit fee of three times the league’s operating budget, or roughly $120 million.”
Furthermore, if the courts find against the university, it will have to pay a significant sum to terminate the rights deal, which Yahoo Sports estimates may cost “as much as $500 million.”
In a different league, the school would most likely not receive a full part of the TV earnings until the following round of media rights purchases. That won’t happen for the Big Ten until 2030. It won’t happen until 2034 for the SEC.
With the College Football Playoff increasing to 12 teams next year, it may make more sense for Florida State to stay put rather than making a hasty choice while still upset over missing out on a playoff spot despite going 13-0 this season.
If Florida State goes unbeaten again, it won’t have to worry about missing the playoffs. If the Big Ten and SEC vultures themselves, it might even be able to withstand a defeat and still qualify.
University officials might exploit the contentious CFP decision to justify leaving the ACC, but that decision would be motivated primarily by profit.
It doesn’t make sense for Florida State to pay such a high price (even if it is only $120 million) unless executives are confident that moving to another conference will ultimately benefit the university’s bottom line.
As much as school officials have lamented over the CFP, Florida State may have the committee to thank if the university finally gets what it has been seeking for so long.
