ACC In Crisis: The Magnificent 7's Plan For Conference Shake-Up!

The Magnificent 7. The teams pushing for either the ACC to be dissolved, or for unequal revenue distribution. Let's get into it.

Brett McMurphy with the Action Network reported that the schools are Clemson, Florida State, Miami, North Carolina, NC State, Virginia & Virginia Tech.

The ACC reportedly requires a majority to dissolve the grant of rights. That would be 8 schools... so one more than these 7. If that happens, the penalty for schools to leave and join other conferences is still $120M... but if you look at the math - there's 13 years left on the ESPN deal and in the grant of rights, and if they're going to be $30M behind SEC and Big Ten schools annually, that $120M would be made up within 4 years.

Now, we've heard the Clemson and Florida State ADs talking about how they need unequal revenue distribution in the ACC in order to be able to keep up on a national level with their peers - not the other schools in the conference, but with schools like Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, Michigan, etc. Right now, the growing revenue gap could leave them $30M a year behind the SEC and Big Ten in annual distribution by 2026... which, coincidentally, would be the first year of the new College Football Playoff contract, which hasn't been negotiated yet.

So let's go through the basics of the grant of rights. Ross Dellenger's article at SI, titled "Expansion, Realignment and What’s at Stake for Power 5 Conferences" states this: "Per the grant-of-rights, each ACC school gives ownership of its broadcasting rights to the league in a deal with ESPN that runs through 2036. If a school breaks the deal, the ACC will continue to own the TV rights of any of that school’s home games, according to the contract."

Let's look at the options Dellenger laid out for the schools that could be interested in, potentially, dissolving the grant of rights.

1. Seek additional revenue from ESPN.
2. Secede from the league.
3. Create another league.
4. Change the revenue distribution model to be more merit based

We'll tackle these piece by piece.

The additional revenue from ESPN ... as we've seen with the Pac 12 negotiations, that doesn't appear likely. ESPN is in a weird spot right now, and with NBA, UFC, WWE, CFP rights all coming up, they're not likely to be willing to spend additional money on something they've already got under contract.

The next is to pay the $120M exit fee, find a way to break the airtight grant of rights... and secede from the league. But where do all the schools go? I've said in the past that, even if these schools did find a way to get out, there are only a few schools that would add value to the Big Ten and SEC. North Carolina is the big one. Obviously Clemson and Florida State bring big value... but they're both in states in which the SEC already has a brand. Does the Big Ten want to bring in those 2 and stretch their existing travel all the way to the south? Remember, this is not just about football.

3rd is to create another league. If 8 decided to dissolve the grant of rights, and only a few joined the Big Ten and SEC, then what happens to the rest? Or what if they dissolve the rights in order to get rid of the dead weight in the conference? We'll talk more about that, and the potential options in another segment...

Finally, the 4th option is the one that - from the most recent reports - appears to have happened now. And that's changing the revenue distribution model. Florida State, Clemson, etc all believe that they should be making more than everyone else in the conference, because of their success, their TV ratings... all kinds of things. And they certainly bring more eyeballs. But by doing this - as Pat Forde said - you're poisoning the conference. Not everybody is an equal - and yeah, that's life, I get it - but it makes it difficult to get things done in the conference. Unequeal revenue is one step closer to the conference breaking apart.

Truth is, this conference probably isn't lasting past the end of this contract anyway - not in its current form. There's nothing that the ACC can do to keep the football brands from feeling like they need to be somewhere else to compete.

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