Breaking News Updates: FSU BOT meeting, unanimous vote to push forward with legal filing
- Thread starter CurtWeiler
- Start date
so what exactly does this mean? Whoever files first wins? FSU has to litigate in NC?
FSU BOT has done amazing things in 2023. This is the best and most important. Very happy for today. Ignore the rhetoric…the ACC has mismanaged its way into extinction. Let’s get into a conference where we can win against the best. Anyone, Anywhere.
Last edited:
Ok she says settlement agreement.
Its what everyone does.
Litigation will take years and tons of money.
What the heck were we thinking.
Why did we keep signing this garbage.
She assumes we have a landing spot lined up…Big10?
The ACC has a fiduciary responsibility to act in good faith but also to perform.
The product might suck but based on the success of the Big 10 it could be argued ‘see they did it’.
A whole bunch of blah blah blah the conference screwed up realignment stuff they screwed up the ACCN etc that really just serves to say the ACC are baffoons.
If it can be proven that the GOR prevents FSU from maximizing its financial potential and restrains trade or commerce then then we can claim the contract invalid.
He is clueless. A pretty big loophole was discovered.
Rather than wait to negotiate better terms in 2027, the ACC granted ESPN a unilateral option to extend the Tier I contract until 2036 without receiving additional compensation.
Yet at the same time, ESPN was negotiating shorter, more lucrative contracts with the other conferences. Under those contracts, the rival conferences have opened a revenue gap of tens of millions of dollars a year, putting the ACC at a disadvantage in both fiscal impact and prestige.
Rather than fix those problems, the ACC has taken steps to prevent schools from defecting to conferences with the more lucrative broadcast contracts, the lawsuit says.
Alright Mr brilliant guy.
I totally agree with everything above.
This is essentially what FSU is alleging.
I am stating that, absent a settlement agreement, this could bog down in the courts for years.
We did not move for summary judgment which says to me that we expect the ACC to give us the Maryland treatment.
We HAVE to be on our way out now. If you think the ACC hated FSU before, "We ain't seen nothin' yet!" IF we can get out pretty much in one piece, I don't care what happens to the Tobacco Road Empire, be it good, or bad. They can invite Pepperdine and Cal Tech (they both used to have football teams) to take our place.
I doubt either of our hoops teams will be awarded double-digit FT attempts in a conference game the rest of their seasons...And just wait for baseball and softball! Strike zones for our batters will be massive and tiny for our pitchers.
Knowing our luck we will get Ron Cherry as the judge.
This seems like the critical point to me. Being in the ACC just cost us a 6mm playoff spot. This conference costs us at every opportunity that will not be hard to validate.
Most importantly, and likely what the ACC is most afraid of, is once we show others the path they will follow it as well. They’re in save the ship mode and they’ll do everything they can in the next 12-18 months to back us down as they’re going to face this same legal battle 5-6 more time’s at minimum before it’s all said and done.
With any luck we get the ball rolling, Clemson, UNC, scUM, UL, and a few others follow suit and we collectively bury this conference in legal fees and paperwork to the point that there’s not a dime left to parachute out its clown show leadership.
We all thank SMU, Cal, and Stanford for their 1 year membership before the conference loses all of its media value, and the remaining “academics” beg the new money partners to keep the conference afloat instead of having to look for another new home.
If only there was a way to assess and enact a liquidated damages suit on top of it.
Now that seems to me like ESPN has been collaborating with the ACC for more than a decade to tamper with realignment. It almost appears, from a distance, that they’ve intentionally devalued the ACC and Big 12 for 15 years in order to allow the SEC to buy up their premier members for a depreciated market value at a time of their choosing.
Given what we know now about their tampering with the selection committee, as well as how the US judicial system feels about how college football is being run, I can only hope we take a go big or go home attitude at this point. Let’s go to court and open things up to discovery. I’d love to see the communications between the leadership at ESPN and the ACC and hope that leads us to further discovery into their communication with the SEC.
Bring the whole thing down. After 12/3 it’s scorched earth time.
He'd give us the business, alright.
Well it’s not exactly the mic drop moment everyone wanted either so…
However, it was along the right subject matter.
Last edited:
I'm curious about the ACC's willingness to settle. Can they?
If they settle with FSU, how do they hold other programs?
Like to get your thoughts.
And when we get out of this,I really hope we don’t join the SEC.
It was tasty. I had mine fried.
Not a full announcement but a necessary step in the right direction.
I'm going to guess that no matter what happens in NC, there will be litigation in Leon County FL unless they reach a settlement first. As far as I can tell, the main point of the NC filing was to protect the GOR, the multi-media deal, and communications between the ACC and ESPN from discovery.
According to the ACCs filing the GOR stipulated that NC was the venue and that all discrepancies would be handled in accordance with NC law.
It’s standard language.
I was thinking the same thing. They won't hold on to any program with a full sec/big invite if they settle. Just spitballing but, if FSU and say 3 other teams have invites and they all pay say a $200M parting gift. That's $800M! You take the $800M, partner up with the big 12 and put together a tier 2 league....That's maybe a path to long term sustainability for the conference to 2032 and beyond.
I wrote that early yesterday. Now that we are able to really look at the complaint, it is clear (if not yet proven in court) that ESPN has not executed the extension that was said to be the basis for extending the GOR to 2036. If that holds true (and I expect it will) the ACC is a dead man walking. The legitimacy of the ACC administration in their role as a fiduciary is completely undermined. On its face, it appears that Swofford lied and there is increasing suspicion that the Raycom holding of tier 2 & 3 rights played a key role. Everyone knows Swofford's son is an executive in Raycom.
So the direct answer is the ACC can't hold other programs.
I'll add this 11 year old article from Forbes as an edit to give my comments more context:
The ACC's Third Tier Rights And Why They're Killing The Conference
Chris SmithFormer Staff
I cover the business of sports.
Jun 4, 2012,10:27am EDT
This article is more than 10 years old.
Raycom CEO Ken Haines (left) and ACC Commissioner John Swofford. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I wrote last week that the ACC is currently on its deathbed, largely because of the conference's poorly renegotiated TV deal with ESPN. My claim provoked an impassioned reaction from commenters on both sides of the debate, and many readers offered detailed and thoughtful responses. But some of those comments also made it apparent that there is a fair amount of confusion regarding the details of the conference's television rights, particularly third tier rights, and what impact they will likely have on the conference's future.
It ultimately comes down to the fact that ACC schools do not retain third tier rights for football or basketball games, a sacrifice that was not rewarded with comparable rights fees to those paid to the other "major" conferences. That does not mean that ACC schools are entirely without valuable media rights, but it puts the conference at a significant disadvantage and has led schools like Florida State and Clemson to consider leaving the ACC for another conference.
To quickly cover the basics: there are three tiers of media rights. The first and second tiers are generally controlled by the conferences, which sell them - either separately or combined - to national networks like ABC/ESPN, CBS and Fox. The first tier rights holder gets first pick of the conference's televised sporting events, usually for over-the-air broadcasts. The unselected games then pass to the second tier rights holder, and games chosen at that level are generally aired on cable networks. The technical definition of "third tier" varies from conference to conference, but it mostly consists of what remains after the first two tier selections have been made. For most conferences, third tier rights belong to the conference members, who are free to monetize them as they see fit.
The most valuable football and basketball telecasts are obviously snatched up by the national networks. What usually remains in the third tier is a few football and basketball games, plus the vast majority of non-revenue sports like baseball, lacrosse and soccer. Third tier rights can also include schools' multimedia rights for things like radio broadcasts, coaches' shows, arena/stadium signage and website advertising.
All of these details are important because the ACC included its first, second and a significant portion its third tier rights in the recently signed contract with ESPN. There was some initial confusion about how much the conference actually gave away, but Burke Magnus, Senior Vice President of ESPN's College Sports Programming, thankfully broke down the details of the new contract a few weeks ago:
In other words, ESPN has the rights to every valuable piece of ACC television property. Especially troubling for ACC schools is that they don't retain rights to football and basketball games, the primary drivers behind television rights fees. The Big 12, by contrast, guarantees each member school third tier rights to one football game and several basketball games each year. ACC schools may be able to monetize the remaining non-revenue games, but the income from third tier live telecasts will be stunted without football or basketball games to help buoy the rights fees.
When I predicted that the conference's days are numbered, the crux of my argument was that the ACC gave away its members' most valuable televised properties but accepted sub-par rights fees (the ACC's deal is worth an average $17 million per school annually; the Big 12's is worth $20 million). In short, the ACC is giving away more and getting back less.
What's more, this isn't the first time that ACC Commissioner John Swofford has left media rights money on the table. When the ACC signed its previous ESPN contract a few years ago, Swofford insisted on maintaining a partnership with syndicator Raycom Sports, possibly giving away increased media rights revenue in the process:
The ACC television rights that Raycom secured are credited with keeping the syndicator alive: "company executives acknowledged that keeping a piece of the ACC’s business was the only way the small, regional TV syndicator and production company could stay relevant." Raycom pays $50 million annually in a sublicense agreement with ESPN; ACC schools see none of that money.
It's rather surprising that a conference would so willingly take less TV money - the core source of revenue in collegiate athletics - just to keep a broadcast company from folding. There are, of course, plenty of conspiracy theories to explain Swofford's irrational decision. Raycom Sports is based in North Carolina, and the ACC is often accused of favoring its four NC schools. Then there's Swofford's son, Chad Swofford, who is the Senior Director of New Media and Business Development at Raycom Sports (he was also employed by Boston College athletics when the school received an invite from the ACC). But regardless of what theory you choose to believe, the ultimate conclusion is that the ACC has not been the best at negotiating its TV rights contracts.
That's not to say that ACC schools are without any media rights. As multiple commenters on Tuesday's story rightly pointed out, conference members retain their non-televised third tier media rights. Sources at Clemson and North Carolina do not expect that the new TV deal will change any of the schools' multimedia rights.
I reached out to IMG College, a sports marketing subsidiary of IMG that has agreements with ten ACC schools, and the company is quite pleased with the TV deal. George Pyne, President of IMG Sports and Entertainment, responded that, "The exposure the ACC gets via ESPN enhances the value of our rights. We are very happy with their agreement. The better the ACC does, the better we do." IMG doesn't foresee any negative impacts from the new deal, though the company would seem to have little to lose if one of its schools were to change conferences.
One example of the value of multimedia rights retained by ACC schools is the new deal North Carolina State signed with Learfield Sports, an IMG College competitor. Some details from the school's official press release:
The $4.9 million annual payout sounds like a sizable paycheck, but it actually ranks towards the bottom of the stack according to a 2010 report by the Sports Business Journal. The simple fact is that NC State, like most ACC schools, has a limited reach compared to schools like Nebraska or Tennessee, which each takes home more than $8.5 million annually just from multimedia rights. The ACC's less valuable multimedia rights make the conference's television contracts increasingly important, especially if ACC members hope to keep up with schools from the other major conferences.
The ACC ultimately signed away more rights than its competing conferences, and it did so for a smaller payout. The proposed changes to college football's postseason are also expected to add even more pressure for conference realignment. The end of the ACC as we know it seems inevitable, and the conference has only itself to blame.
Last edited:
It was a long way from discussing funding for the SAFF. Don't know if you've had a chance to look at the complaint in detail, but among other things it serves notice to the ACC that we are leaving by the beginning of the '25 season. If that ain't a drop mic moment in the context of this issue, I don't know what you were looking for
I cannot imagine the ACC and ESPN want this public. It would have major implications to include other leagues
And here we are.
Never a chance FSU would be "stuck " in the ACC until 2036.
I knew the track record of incompetence by the ACC leadership would provide plenty of exit material to work with.
Never a chance FSU would be "stuck " in the ACC until 2036.
I knew the track record of incompetence by the ACC leadership would provide plenty of exit material to work with.
Can you point out which paragraph in the ACC's filing? I didn't see that point made anywhere in its lengthy argument seeking to establish NC venue. Nor does any such language appear in the GOR itself that the ACC included as Exhibit 2. It is standard language, and I am surprised that it is not addressed in the GOR.
Your right. Now we need to handle the exit fee and get a landing spot. The refs will love us next year.
Geddy you are right about the refs. But it's the "landing spot" that has me concerned. I can only hope they already have a "wink-wink" understanding with somebody who matters in either the SEC or B1G. Otherwise,"Look out UCF, Big 12 here we come!"
Looking at the ACC filing, my legally ignorant cracker mind became convinced that R'fish is right. The ACC seems to be asking the NC court to grant a stipulation after the fact that was not specified in their original document. Maybe the venue stipulation is there, but it is a very, very special secret and the ACC will not even allow a judge to see it.
My lawyer sources tell me a judge can see anything he needs under "a protective order."
The judge can also grant FSU the right to see documents they need to see in discovery, or relevant portion of documents, with a protective order. They tell me that means the document would be for FSU's eyes only and not for transmission. And FSU could be found liable if they do not maintain control for only the purpose granted.
They also tell me the ACC may have a contractual obligation with their media partners (notably ESPN) not to show or transmit the multi-media rights agreement because it contains proprietary information ESPN would not want their competitor FOX or other networks to see. But the judge can grant FSU the right under a protective order.
Of course, the ACC's lawyers could argue details about the "protective order", or what they must provide, in an effort to delay providing those documents to the court, which burns time and runs up legal fees.
Welcome attorneys to comment on this.
I personally believe it is all about a settlement. FSU knows that whether they litigate in Fla or in NC, FSU is going to subpoena and receive every single bit of communication between ESPN (Disney) and the ACC. They should also have access to internal correspondence between Disney and ESPN that relates to the ACC. There is not a multi-billion-dollar company in the world that wants their correspondence made public. It would not surprise me that ESPN (Disney) tells the ACC to make this whole mess go away quickly or else.
I have no reason to believe there is some deep dark secret in an email that becomes FSU's get out of jail free card. I do believe there are hundreds of emails that were written that the authors never expected would see the light of day and do not want them made public.
Thanks!
You make a compelling argument about "the hudreds of emails". I'd be surprised if there weren't tens of thousands of emails (or more) FSU' attorneys will have to take a very long time review.ing looking for evidence.
I would imagine every ESPN and ACC employee was warned that it was inevitable that their work would see the light of day. This day was inevitable and as an ESPN employee you had to know it.
I suspect most were careful about what channels they used to communicate. I know a lot of the information communicated by the ACC to FSU was not printed, or emailed. It was spoken as a matter of business as they didn't want it subject to sunshine for competitive (SEC, BIG 10, BIG 12) reasons.
I hope they find the get out of jail card in discovery. There are inferences they suspect some bad behavior so they probably have a good idea of when and where to look. Hopefully there were people at the ACC and ESON back then who suffered from hubrus and left some bread crums in their correspondence that lead to the smoking gun.
How quick ESPN and the ACC provide those documents will tell you a little bit about how confident they are in their internal communication controls.
Curious what others think.
Let's hope everything is accessible. There have been numerous high-profile cases where these things mysteriously disappear.
