Who Won the Legal Battles with the ACC, Clemson, and Florida State?

settle the four lawsuits among the three combatants. So now it is time for the post-game analysis to try to come to a conclusion as to who won the legal battles with the ACC, Clemson, and Florida State.

The schools are expected to have their vote on Tuesday. The ACC will have a conference call with the Board of Directors, which would be the presidents/chancellors of the member universities. All three entities must approve the settlement for it to go through and end nearly two years of litigation.

The terms are equal parts simple and convoluted. The original information makes it clear there is still some math to be done. But the basics are clear. The ACC will reinvent its television revenue sharing model to reward the programs that get the ratings. There will be a lowering of the fees for anyone who wants to exit the conference. That fee is expected to come down in 2029 or 2030.

But as is usually the case in these complex lawsuits, little is as simple as it seems.

The Biggest Question Goes Unanswered

There were multiple “main” points of the litigation with Florida State and Clemson as the plaintiffs. The ACC version was simple. They were accusing the two schools of breach of contract. Period. Full stop.

The schools sought to legally challenge the money it would take to get out of the ACC. But more than anything, they were fighting to own their broadcast rights should they choose to leave. While the exit fees were high, they were not necessarily prohibitive, especially with Florida State starting to take on private equity money.

But no school is attractive to a new conference if the athletic department is not coming with its broadcast rights in its back pocket. And with no judicial verdicts in this case, the question of who owns those rights if a school leaves the conference remains unanswered. And it was the biggest question of this entire legal undertaking.

A Few Schools Win

The revised revenue plan works like this. The schools that get the best ratings over a five-year rolling average period are now going to get 60% of the conference’s TV revenue. How many schools that will be is TBD, but a viable assumption is that it will be a group of three to four schools. SMU, Cal, and Stanford are not part of the revenue sharing model yet. That leaves 10 schools that will share the 40% of the television revenue.

In overly simplistic terms, those with the numbers could get as much as an additional $15 million each per year. But the conference is not getting any more money from its TV partners than what exists in the current contract. And the money for the winners has to come from somewhere. So the haves will be getting their money from the have nots. Those only getting a split of the 40% will likely lose about $6 million each per year from what they are getting now.

That seems to be good news for the likes of Florida State, Clemson, and Miami. Bad news for Wake Forest, Boston College, Virginia Tech, Pitt, and others. And the news for the non-heavy hitting ratings schools is that the drop in income comes at a time when the schools will begin revenue sharing with all of their athletes. ACC schools are a distant third among the Power Four conferences when it comes to the money being dolled out to the member institutions. Some schools taking a hit from that already comparatively low amount is going to hurt.

The ACC For the Win

The ACC got most of what it wanted. First, the conference is staying together for the foreseeable future. Florida State trustee Drew Weatherford said Monday after the decision was announced, “It’s not a matter of if we leave the ACC, but how & when we leave.” That sounds bold but the reality is different than the saber rattling. As everyone packed up their briefcases and went home, the question remained about who owns the broadcast rights when a school leaves. And without your broadcast, you have little value to the SEC or the Big 10. No adjudication on the topic means no clear-cut path out of the ACC for Florida State for the time being.

And if the litigation had gone far enough so as to answer that question, it would have created a blueprint for North Carolina, Virginia, Miami and others to leave, thus ending the ACC as we know it. With this settlement, Commissioner Jim Phillips avoids the George Kliavkoff fate.

Big Two Conferences Win By Doing Nothing

The Big 10 and SEC are financially lapping the other conferences. Even with an additional $15 million per year, Florida State and Clemson will still be making less conference money than Rutgers, Purdue, Vanderbilt and others. That gap will grow larger as the TV contracts for the Big 10 and the SEC come up for renewal before the ACC gets anywhere near the end of the Grant of Rights.

The Big 10 and SEC will have interest in some ACC schools when there is the realignment musical chairs again in the years to come. But for now, while others engaged in two years of legal jousting, the Big Two began their cycle of owning the college football post-season formats and entrenched their national strength even further. They have their bottom of the conference schools making more money than they ever imagined.

Meanwhile, the bottom half of the ACC is about to lose money in a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul scenario and they have little choice but to take it and be glad they still have a home.