So much for WVU's fans thinking that Stanford wants to be in the same conference with them.
David Hale: ACC exploring WVU, SMU, UO/UW for possible expansion
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I'd rather be in a conference with WVU than Stanford, Screw academics, I'd rather have The Brawl every year.So much for WVU's fans thinking that Stanford wants to be in the same conference with them.
Hilarious how offering Oregon and Washington was questionable.
It wasn’t
They were working with the b10 while the acc offered
So they took the bigger payday
Same reason why the b12 didn’t go for them
Once again, how many times do actual reputable sources (as opposed to the random bloggers that so many here seem to prefer) have to say that the ACC was in talks with the PAC10 schools a year ago after USC and UCLA bailed and the PAC10 schools were not interested do there have to be before people believe it?
People believe any random thing from bloggers who are clearly just making crap up to get hits, but then someone reputable reports something that doesn't fit with their world view so they just ignore it.
No, experts here said that adding Washington and Oregon was not financial doable for the ACC, which is ridiculous. Now they are possibly going to add Stanford and Cal, which is quite the dropoff.
It wasn't financially doable because Washington and Oregon weren't interested in coming to the ACC at the steep discount that Cal and Stanford are. If at any time Washington and Oregon had told the ACC that they would be content with a 30% share for the next six years or so the ACC would have made them an offer before they even could have gotten the full sentence out of their mouths.
As it is, Washington and Oregon are so valuable that they locked themselves into a Big Ten payment that will be less starting next year than what the ACC paid out the year before last, and they've agreed to only minimal raises for the following five years. They weren't going to take a deal like that from the ACC, not two years ago, not last year, not last month, not today, not ever.
It's really not that hard to understand, assuming that you have actually been paying attention to what has gone on.
I was watching a replay of 03 Fitz highlights n long story short ended up watching VT vs Miami... It's almost unbelievable how good the BE was there for a while, which ultimately became the ACC...
And imagine if we grabbed Florida State, Penn State, and South Carolina when they were available. What could’ve been…
And we aren't even mentioning men's BB... The BE def shit the bed... Is the ACC following the BE blueprint by doing nothing??? I get not doing anything, but you almost have to do something right??? They almost can't be right or wrong in the decision.
They locked themselves into that for the future, not because they got a better current deal. The ACC needed to go big there. They didn't, and that's all she wrote for the future of the ACC as a power conference. It's ovah.
So they did it to get a better deal in the future, but somehow you think that they would have taken a worse deal in the future AND in the present if the ACC would have just asked them nicely?
For your point to have any validity at all you have to think that Oregon and Washington would have rather been in the ACC than the Big Ten. And if you really think that then you are a moron.
You know that the PAC10 Presidents thought, right up until they got the offer, that they were going to get at least something similar to what the ACC and Big 12 were getting, right? And that when they broke off their meetings on a Thursday night that they all thought they were getting together Friday morning to sign off on the television deal and a GOR, right? And that in those hours between their Thursday night meeting and the 7:00 Friday morning meeting that Washington and Oregon changed their minds and decided to go to the Big Ten, right?
So if you know all that, you then would know that that would have left the ACC with a window of opportunity of a couple of hours at most, and that they would have been competing with the Big Ten offer at that point.
There was, literally, no time that Oregon and Washington were open to leaving the PAC10 that they didn't have a Big Ten offer waiting for them. Literally, none.
There is no way Washington and Oregon were signing a GOR with the Pac 12. Use common sense.
As a condition of signing their new television deal, of course they were. Just like all the rest of them were. It's the only way they were getting a television deal.
The amount of stuff that you know that is factually incorrect is stunning.
It’s no use with that dude
He’s the same dude who think the font impacts performance and attendance
Logic and common sense are apparently lacking in our fanbase
Hint - pitt and cuse likewise had the offer in hand before announcing their intention to leave .
Because otherwise you look like clownshoes SDSU who said “we are leaving “ to the MWC, but turns out they didn’t have a home .
I’m almost sure the ACC’s tv deal pre-exists the GOR. And then the deal was extended along with the GOR at the same time.
That will probably be one of the legal challenges to the GOR that FSU will make if/when they challenge it.
There’s a not so crazy argument that no consideration was ever given for the GOR.
At some level it's hilarious the way that people are willing to believe internet bloggers who just basically make stuff up to get hits but refuse to believe what multiple people with actual sources say.
At another level it's kind of scary.
Good luck with that argument. The original GOR was signed in 2013 after UMD left, and they extended the ESPN contract in 2016. The GOR was subsequently amended in 2016 to tie it to the new TV contract, which was required by ESPN to get the new deal.
Unless FSU is going to say they didn't sign it, which they obviously did, not sure what argument they have.
But ESPN pays for the tv rights.
The GOR is between the ACC and the member schools.
So the question would be: what did the ACC give? You’re more saying what ESPN gave.
And the problem would still be: the GOR was signed *after* the tv deal. The money ESPN gives, even if you want to argue that’s the consideration the ACC gave, cannot be consideration for the GOR. The fact that they extended everything out doesn’t change that.
I don’t know if that argument will win. But it’s not a “good luck with that prayer” legal argument.
Just think, a bunch of high priced lawyers couldn’t figure this out. Fsu should just read this.
What makes you think they haven’t?
I’m not arguing that any of the potential legal arguments are going to win.
But they aren’t without merit.
The problem FSU has isn’t that they can’t win. It’s what happens if they don’t? And that’s scary.
In Texas you’re more likely to bring a crazy premises liability case than you are a sound defamation case. Because there’s no financial consequence to losing the premises case on an MSJ. But there are huge ones for losing the defamation one on an anti-SLAPP motion.
I don't follow. The schools gave their TV rights, and ESPN agreed to pay X sum of money for Y years along with the ACCN agreement. The GOR is tied to the TV agreements.
Edit: I am not an attorney, however I've dealt with (and worked with attorneys on) contract terms for partners, customers, and vendors throughout my career. The GOR is very succinct and clean. There's no wiggle language that's usually written into these contract that you can use to claim breach or break it. Maybe I'm overly simplistic in my read, but that's my unprofessional opinion.
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ESPN pays the ACC for the television rights. The ACC pays the schools. The schools signed a GOR to the ACC in return for the big checks.
I agree the language in the GOR is airtight.
But it isn’t the language itself that will be challenged in the sense of some ambiguous wording or loophole. Or at least smarter attorneys than myself will have to see those things.
The 3 things that jump out right away though are:
1.’ Consideration
2. Specific performance
3. The whole thing is a Liquidated damage clause intended to prevent another MD from happening.
Pointing to the ironclad language of the GOR isn’t really an answer to those things.
Certainly not the last two.
Specific performance is disfavored in every single jurisdiction of the United States. If it’s possible for the breaching party to stroke a check, then unless it’s real property, they stroke a check. It’s extremely difficult to get a court to enforce anything else.
And while liquidated damages are enforceable, they better be reasonably calculated or you better show the calculation of damages was just too difficult. Does this really seem like that kind of situation? We know exactly what FSU is worth. ESPN is paying the ACC an amount that reflects that. What the ACC rights are worth minus FSU is probably a pretty easy to calculate number.
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Right.’ So it’s more like an assignment. Which has its own set of legal issues.
Your contention is that Oregon and Washington were going to sign the laughable Pac 12 tv deal, which would include a GOR. I'm saying there was no way there were signing the deal.
It's pretty clear in the GOR that the LDs are the media rights. There's no limitation of liability or limit to the LDs in any of the clauses. The worst thing FSU could do is argue their value in the ESPN contract, because the yearly distribution per team would be the floor, and it would be easy to argue they are more valuable than the average.
I don't know what a consideration argument could possibly be here, and I don't know enough about specific performance to comment.
To your last paragraph, the entire reason why Florida State would be pursuing this is because they believe they are worth more than what they are being paid. As a result, they are certainly worth more to the ACC than they’re being paid - that’s the problem.
If Florida State has evidence to support that their current media market value is closer to $50M or more versus the $34M or whatever that they’re currently being paid, why would the ACC not respond by saying, “we agree with Florida State’s valuation. $50M times 12 years, plus the exit fee?” After all, that is the value that they bring to the league that the league would be missing out on if they leave.
It actually is.
If the argument doesn’t win, that sort of by definition means it was without merit.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Couple of things...
FSU would have to prove that somewhere, somehow, the ACC knew that FSU would be worth more than they received and lied to get them to sign the deal. Of course, that would be really easy to prove through discovery. But that's one of the inconvenient problems with discovery, it opens yourself up to having your secrets exposed. For all we know, they argued for more punitive language after the MD thing happened and know they're going to step in it. There is also the fact that the ACC continues to try to improve revenue and has tilted the formula towards performance.
Then there is the whole, how do they know they're worth more, argument. They can't actually say, with certainty, what they're worth because there isn't an ironclad way to prove it. You can guestimate based on some similarities but there isn't any sort of formal offer or even any certainty that they wouldn't be relegated to a smaller bite of the apple like Oregon or MD or what the ACC has been offering, potentially. I suppose it's possible to nail some number range down but it might not be big enough to prove harm.
At the end of the day, bad deals get made and you just can't sue your way out of them. Especially when the revenue projections were right under your nose as your were signing the paperwork. Sometimes you just have to suck it up if you can't negotiate more favorable terms. Conditions also change and that isn't a good enough reason to break a contract. I speak for everyone who had fixed price contracts who had to deal with material shortages through the pandemic when I say, them's the breaks, sometimes.
And they have a remedy if they're really convinced they're worth more. It's likely that they would have had to at least try to negotiate their way down to a lower exit fee, in good faith, before they can even claim harm.
It’s even more frivolous, too, when you consider that the ACC’s revenue has actually *exceeded* the original projections almost every year since the contract was signed in 2016.
Florida State signed a contract in good faith, and they have now realized that they could very well be able to get a better deal elsewhere. There’s really only one solution for that problem, and it happens all the time in law: you pay to get out of it. Florida State potentially being able to get a better contract somewhere else ultimately is not the ACC’s problem. Getting out of contracts is not supposed to be easy or inexpensive, especially a contract that pays eight figures per year and climbing over a term of 20 years. That’s the point of having a contract in the first place.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
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