Looks like the ACC is one step closer to being a Group of 5 conference.
https://twitter.com/adavidhalejoint/status/1896983487900750262?s=46
Moar details here:
Specifically, a slideshow during a presentation to Clemson’s trustees reported the exit fee would be $165 million for the 2026 fiscal year, but would descend by $18 million per year until leveling off around $75 million for the 2030-31 season. While a grant-of-rights agreement gives the league control of a school’s media rights, the deal would allow a school to exit with its media rights after paying the exit fee, according to that presentation.
So it’s getting cheaper to exit the league AND you get to regain control of your media rights? Under the previous agreement, you could leave the ACC, but the ACC wouldn’t leave you, owning your media rights revenue through 2038 even if you played in the SEC. The ACC wouldn’t leave capitalize off your success, even if you didn’t want it to. Here’s the fuzzy language:
“At the end of the day, this innovative distribution model which further incentivizes performance and investment will help strengthen the ACC,” Clemson athletic director Graham Neff told trustees before the vote. “A strong ACC is good for Clemson. And a strong Clemson is good for the ACC.”
Can someone help me out here? A strong Clemson, owning its own media rights while playing in their new conference helps the ACC? What am I missing here?
So it sounds like the current members will get a better revenue sharing agreement, but the genesis of this was FSU’s omission from the 2023 CFP, largely because of the diminished national perception of the ACC. I don’t see that improving just because the members gets more money now, and it seems they’ve made it financially easier for the litigious parties to still exit if it doesn’t improve.
News flash: it won’t. SMU garnered immediate “credibility” in year one in the league, which isn’t doing the conference any favors.
ACC, we hardly respected thee. Like we had any reason to, anyway.
My take: FSU and Clemson were gone regardless so this plan attempts to incentivize them to stay a little longer under the idea that the more eyeballs you get the more you’ll make. Tech, Duke, NC State get screwed but they can’t go anywhere anyway so “tough”. This means ND ain’t joining or they’d get all the marbles. Last ditch attempt by ACC…not going to work. But then what choice did they have?
Any addition to the $ec will be about numbers, when scanning the acc, ya really don’t see a institution/program that you think “gotta’ have that school” (maybe nd?, maybe not), $ec brings more value to the acc teams vs acc teams to the $ec, which turns back to the conver$ation of who can afford to tran$fer to another conference…since free shoes/klempzin have opened this can, they have to continue, crying wolfy more than once, won’t scare anyone…GO DAWGS!!
FSU and Clemson will be interesting to watch. They don’t bring new TV markets to the SEC. They may not fit Big10 academic and thus are stricty a TV move. Is locking the Big10 out of these markets worth it for the SEC? But then again it all comes down to Mickey and they’ll televise it likely either way.
Oh, no!
Anyway…
First of all, I disagree with the premise that anything is better than Jimbo Fisher’s buyout. Second of all, this is a much better deal for Clemson and FSU than I ever expected, which tells me that the lawyers that evaluated the grant of rights clause in the contracts at least had some concerns. Since those legal clauses match those of other conferences, I think some of the lesser teams in the bigger conferences are officially on notice.
It appears to me FSU courted the SEC and Big 10 and found that those 2 weren’t interested in adding it. At that point FSU was in the “ACC, let’s make a deal” mood. The ACC may have wanted to avoid having a federal district court determine if their grant of rights after a team leaves rule violations the Sherman Act. Everyone wanted a way out by settlement.