Five ways the ACC can be improved from an FSU perspective
1. Pressure the conference for a bigger piece of the pie
ACC Commissioner John Swofford made it clear a long time ago that he is a strong proponent of equal revenue sharing within the conference. In fact, back in 2011, he called it “sacred." However, Swofford has already fudged from that promise by allowing Notre Dame to join the conference as a partial member. The Irish gain the benefits of being affiliated with a Power Five conference but don’t have to share the financial benefits from their huge television contract.
Since the door has been opened against the strict adherence to equal revenue sharing, there’s a case to be made for programs that drive the financial train to be rewarded accordingly. By Swofford’s own admission, football brings in about 80 percent of the revenue from the ACC’s television deal with ESPN. Considering that FSU and Clemson overwhelming carry the weight in football, shouldn’t those programs reap some extra benefits?
I’m certainly not proposing that the conference attempt to assess FSU’s financial value and pay accordingly from its TV contract. Even if that could be calculated, it would create too wide of a gap between FSU, Clemson and the other conference members. Instead, it’s reasonable to award the more successful programs a modest reward or bonus. Here are a couple off-the-cuff ideas on how this could be done:
- Give schools a larger percentage of the bowl/postseason revenue. This rewards on-the-field success and shares the conference's financial windfall with the schools that are primarily responsible for the payout. For instance, the College Football Playoff and New Year's Six Bowls generated approximately $60 million for the ACC in 2015-16. If your school participates in one of the New Year's Six Bowls, you receive a 10 percent bonus ($6 million to FSU this past season), 15 percent for making the playoffs and 20 percent for making the playoff finals ($12 million to Clemson). That still leaves $42 million for the rest of the conference. Plus, any schools making non-major bowls should also receive a percentage of the take (maybe 20 percent for those schools to split).
- To appease programs that have stronger basketball programs, a similar postseason percentage from the NCAA men’s basketball tournament also makes sense.
- As Warchant has documented on numerous occasions, Florida State typically loses money when it plays in the ACC football championship. Losing money because you are more successful is ridiculous, and a formula needs to be set up to ensure that this never happens again. This is especially the case if the conference continues to insist on playing the game in North Carolina every year. Holding a championship game 450 miles from Tallahassee and expecting fans to pay top dollar for tickets, transportation and lodging on a somewhat regular basis is asking a lot (FSU has played in four of the last six championship games in Charlotte, N.C.). Throw in that the fan base may be more concerned with saving money for a big bowl game or a playoff appearance, and it’s not surprising that Seminole fans don’t gobble up tickets like they might if the game were held in a different location.
- Provide a bonus to the schools that are featured for live ESPN Gameday broadcasts or participate in Thursday night games. If your team is featured on ESPN, it means you have a valued product and should be paid accordingly.
I get it, every fan base complains about officiating. But Florida State has a real gripe when it comes to football officiating in the ACC. It has been shown time and time again that Florida State gets called for holding far more than any team in the ACC, and at the same time receives few holding calls in its favor.
Back in 2012, the Tallahassee Democrat’s Corey Clark reviewed seven seasons in the ACC and found that FSU had been called for holding more than twice as much as the team with the fewest holding penalties, N.C. State (83 to 40 times). His research also showed that FSU benefits from opponents' holding calls far less than you would expect given the elite talent it produces on defense. In fact, looking back at all the games since FSU joined the ACC in 1992, the ‘Noles had been called for 79 more holds than it has drawn on defense.
Of course, beyond the holding calls, there have been several other ACC officiating blunders through the years, including the massive debacle in last season’s Miami-Duke game. Seminole fans also, of course, remember the back-to-back screw-ups in the 2011 and 2012 Miami games -- Nigel Bradham being ejected for a legal hit in 2011 and then referee David Epperley attempting to erroneously enforce a 10-second runoff rule on FSU at the end of the half in 2012.
Last year, Warchant.com published a story documenting officiating bias in the ACC based on an independent research project. Not surprisingly, the study showed underdogs tended to receive preferential treatment in the ACC. Again, this is consistent with the bizarre disparity in holding calls involving Florida State. But what makes no sense is the trend is exactly the opposite when it comes to men’s basketball. Basketball powers Duke and North Carolina frequently lead the conference in free-throw disparity, and many believe that the conference officials bend over backwards to protect the premier basketball programs.
The point is, it’s past time to revamp the league’s officiating and make more of an investment in the personnel. Just last year, the ACC hired official Penn Wagers, who earned a dubious reputation in the SEC and appears to have been run off by his former employer. He rang FSU up for a season-high 10 penalties against Wake Forest and was involved in many questionable calls.
If Wagers was pushed out of one conference, there was probably a good reason for it. So why was the ACC so willing to hire leftovers from the SEC? Enough is enough. Whatever the league has been doing isn’t working. Time to scrap the old guard and start over.
3. Get away from the basketball- and Tobacco Road-centric mentality
We all know that the epicenter of the Atlantic Coast Conference is smack dab in the middle of Tobacco Road. It’s also patently obvious that there is a strong basketball-centric mentality within the conference. But catering everything to the schools in North Carolina has to stop.
Eight straight baseball conference tournaments, five of the last seven men’s basketball tournaments, and six straight football championships have all taken place in North Carolina. While the ACC will espouse the merits of holding nearly all the major championships close to ACC headquarters, it sends the message to the schools outside of the Research Triangle that your teams and fans are second-class citizens. That’s not a healthy impression for the majority of the league to have. The only way to change that is to mix up the major championships a little more, especially football and baseball, where there are strong followings in these sports outside of the Carolinas.
As for the basketball-first mentality, if you attend a conference football championship as a fan or media member, and then compare that to the treatment received during an ACC men’s basketball tournament, it’s hard not to notice a significant difference. The basketball tournament is a well-staffed event with little expense spared. The ACC support staff is incredibly accommodating, the food is top notch and the whole event runs smoothly thanks to careful planning.
The same can’t be said for the ACC football championship. It almost seems like a bother for the ACC to have to put on this event every year. It’s very clear, maybe more so for a media member attending, that football doesn’t generate the same focus from ACC personnel and that logistical problems are more frequent. The ACC football championship has been a decent event, but it’s clearly not getting the support it should from the conference compared to men’s basketball, considering that football is the cash cow.
4. Foster a better working relationship with ESPN to both feature and protect the top programs
ESPN butchered, sensationalized, witch-hunted and borderline slandered and libeled Florida State for well over a year between 2013-14. Given the audience reading this, I know I’m preaching to the choir, so there’s no reason to review the litany of transgressions the Mother Ship perpetrated on Florida State and Jameis Winston. Clearly, other media outlets like the New York Times, USA Today and Yahoo jumped into the fray to get their pound of flesh from Seminoles Nation (and the corresponding page clicks that came with it).
But the real issue for many in Tallahassee is that Florida State, through the ACC, has an exclusive working relationship with ESPN. But for some reason, that didn’t mean squat when the nation’s largest sports network smelled blood in the water. What makes the behavior so aggravating to anyone associated with FSU is that ESPN frequently handles the SEC with kid gloves when it comes to negative news. Like with the ACC, ESPN has a strong financial investment in broadcasting games involving the SEC. The difference probably stems from the fact that the SEC Network is valued at approximately $5 billion, so there’s a very strong incentive to protect that enormous investment. There’s no such investment in a network currently for the ACC.
With that in mind, why doesn’t the ACC stand up for Florida State when it becomes clear that its TV network partner is stepping over the line in its coverage of one of its member schools? Swofford and the ACC did nothing through it all, from Heather Cox badgering Jameis Winston on the field after the ACC Championship, to Paul Finebaum flat out calling him a “rapist," to Darren Rovell concocting an autograph scandal that never existed during the week of a huge showdown with Notre Dame, to Mark Schlabach digging through thousands of police reports hoping to find any transgression, even slight, to pile on a program that had already taken blow after blow from ESPN.
Nobody is saying that Florida State or Jameis Winston was perfect during his time on campus. Some mistakes were made. But there was a massive disparity between what was being reported by ESPN and others compared to what actually happened. This should have been the perfect opportunity for the ACC to reach out to its television partner and say enough is enough. But there’s been no indication that was ever done, at least not publicly. And you come away with the strong impression that the ACC doesn’t have FSU’s back. If that’s the case, then why should FSU care about the conference?
5. Develop a financially lucrative conference television network
OK, so this was the no-brainer of the bunch. It’s also been a hot topic the last couple of years as the SEC and Big Ten continue to reap huge financial benefits from conference networks.
The important focus here isn’t simply launching some sort of network -- because that’s happening, and probably sooner than you think. The key is having a network that results in a real monetary benefit to the member schools. The amount received by the schools must make a real dent in the growing financial disparity between the ACC and competing conferences. If not, the conference has failed in the promises it made when it convinced FSU to sign off on the Grant of Rights.
Launching a network for the sake of saying you have a conference network is meaningless without a real financial benefit behind it. And that’s the real fear if the ACC announces something later this year as expected. The new “network,” if that’s what it can truly be called, will likely be touted by the ACC as the greatest thing since sliced bread. I also expect the conference and certain writers/bloggers who push the company line to imply that all perceived financial shortcomings between the ACC and other Power Five schools will have been resolved.
However, unless the ACC and the consulting firm it paid over $600K, came up with a magic pill, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where an “ACC network” will be able to generate another $10-15 million per school each year, which is what is needed if the ACC hopes to keep up with the Big Ten and SEC. There just aren’t enough big market schools in the ACC to generate the type of interest necessary to hit those lofty marks. The real question is how much of a dent the new network will make on the widening financial gap between the ACC and the rest of the other P5 conferences.
Just missed making the top five:
- Realign the divisions - There are several ways to shake up the divisions and most scenarios are better than the current setup. Florida State and Georgia Tech need to be in the same division and it makes no sense for FSU and Syracuse to play each other every year. Splitting up FSU and Clemson also seems logical but the downside is the conference would often miss out on its marque regular season game. Point is, shake things up because the status quo it's working.
- Under no circumstances move to a nine-game conference slate. There's been a push recently for the ACC to go from eight to nine regular season conference games. The positive for the conference it that it would create more TV inventory for ESPN (possibly resulting in a slight bump in the TV payout) and would help the second and third tier teams by giving them another viable game on their schedules. However, a nine-game conference schedule would absolutely screw over the ACC's main powers Florida State and Clemson. Forcing an extra conference game on teams that have annual in-state clashes with out of conference opponents would drastically limit scheduling for those teams. Florida State and Clemson would have 10 games locked in every year (11 when Notre Dame slides into the rotation) and would handcuff those school's ability to schedule enough home games to meet budgets. The additional limitation could also hinder the scheduling of neutral site games like the FSU-Ole Miss game this year. It would all go back to No. 3 on the list since a nine-game conference schedule would be appease Tobacco Road but not the programs that carry the load for the conference.
