Most of us figured Clemson and FSU leaving the ACC was a forgone conclusion. Well as Lee Corso says, not so fast my friend.
If you have access to the Clemson site TigerIllustrated.com, they dropped a nugget that had realignment followers doing double takes. Also, none of these so-called insiders had a peep about this until today.
Clemson and FSU could reach a settlement that allows them to stay in the ACC and drop their lawsuit.
This is a paraphrased highlight from that piece.
Florida State and Clemson are in negotiation with the ACC about getting even bigger portions of the revenue share. In turn they would drop the lawsuits and remain in the conference.
It’s behind a paywall, but the rest of the article is here if you can get to it.
Ok so many questions here.
How valid is this?
Well, the author is a pretty reputable Clemson insider Larry Williams. Of course, school insiders have often been wrong, but I certainly give more credence to this over your garden variety realignment Twitter account. I don’t think Williams puts this in print without some kind of knowledge of the situation.
Why would the ACC consider this?
Even if the ACC is in a stronger legal position, you end the lawsuit and anyone else considering leaving basically starts litigation all over again. The current litigation wasn’t even close to being resolved. You might not have a stable ACC in the long term, but you buy yourself 5 maybe 10 years more. In the current landscape that’s an eternity.
Why would the other ACC schools even consider this?
Going back to question #2, anyone who wants to leave will have to go to court yet again. The majority of ACC schools won’t have a P2 invite, and please don’t start with the Big 12. Nobody is suring the ACC to join the Big 12. The P2 isn’t inviting anyone until the legal issues are resolved either. I believe during this lookin ESPN is going to increase to some extent the value media rights deal. In fact, this is almost a guarantee. We know ACC buyback rights to start the ACCN come off the books in 2027, and the 3rd and 4th tier rights that currently are with CW, revert back to ESPN marginally increasing the media deal. It is rumored a 9th conference game could be added as well. These are incremental additions, which would not add up enough to not catch the P2, but could put a small dent in that gap.
Why would Clemson and FSU consider this?
No guarantee of winning the lawsuit, and more money is more money.
How would this even work?
This is not without precedent. When the Big 12 nearly imploded in 2011, Texas and Oklahoma stayed in the Big 12 10+ more years when they could negotiate their own 3rd year TV deals. Obviously the ACCN won’t allow that, but prior to that the Big 12 had a model based on network TV reach. It can be done.
Why would ESPN get behind this?
They want to maintain the successful ACC Network. The reasons for ESPN to keep the ACC intact are the same now as 2 years ago when we first addressed this topic.
Will this really happen?
Maybe Maybe not, but the chances are higher than this time last week. Personally given the rhetoric that came out of FSU particularly for the last year, I’d still have the odds of this actually happening at lower than 20% until I see something more, but it’s not zero. That’s fact
