Florida State hasn’t been relevant in football since Jameis Winston was on campus.
Virginia Tech hasn’t been relevant since Frank Beamer was on campus and, quite frankly, I could make a case since Beamer had Mike Vick. Miami hasn’t been relevant since Luke Campbell and Nevin Shapiro were paying for players and offering bounties.
North Carolina, Virginia and NC State???? Ha, ha! What are the people at those schools smoking? Because it must be good!
Give me a break, will you please? I mean Lawrence Taylor, Bullet Bill Dudley and Bill Cowher ain’t walking through that door anytime soon for goodness sake.
You want to tell me that Clemson is looking for a bigger bang for its buck from the ACC? OK, I might listen, as the Tigers have had some high-level success, been to the playoffs six times and won two national championships.
But even Clemson as a national brand is probably still way overrated. And, quite frankly, the Tigers have had far more the feel of a team that is winning against a weak conference than a national elite powerhouse like Alabama or Georgia.
Clemson at least has a case to be upset with the TV contracts of the ACC because the Tigers have done their part.
Those other six schools of the seven who are looking into perhaps challenging the ACC’s grant of rights so as to go out and get better deals from other conferences have to be kidding themselves. This can’t be real, can it?
These reports can’t be legitimate. They just can’t. Virginia? Virginia? What in the heck does Virginia bring to the ACC football conference? And what would it bring to one of the other conferences?
The Big Ten already has a team to beat up in the D.C. market in Maryland and the SEC already has a high academic team to beat up in Vanderbilt. What would these other conferences and their television partners want with Virginia as a football program?
And here is the thing: While on-field success is a key ingredient, the branding and size of the fan base and markets are far more important, and in that regard, I am not sure any one of these schools other than Florida State and Clemson is attractive.
That’s what makes this current discussion of schools leaving the ACC and breaking the grant of rights they all signed all so utterly delusional.
But let’s back up. In case you haven’t heard, the ACC is having their annual spring meetings this week in Florida. The major discussion is about how the ACC’s revenue streams — mostly TV money — are projected to lag behind the other major conferences and what is a possible remedy.
Here is a really good Cliffs Notes version of the issues from CBS Sports:
“Action Network and Sports Illustrated are reporting Florida State, Clemson, Miami, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia and Virginia Tech as the seven schools that have met with legal teams in recent months to examine the league's grant of rights. The ACC's exclusive media rights deal with ESPN runs through 2036, several years after the conclusion of the deals that soon begin for the SEC and Big Ten. The SEC enters a 10-year media rights deal with ESPN worth $3 billion in 2024, while the Big Ten enters a seven-year deal with NBC, CBS and FOX worth more than $7 billion in total value beginning this season.”
The ACC schools screwed themselves, to be honest, and now they are unhappy about it. They all wanted so badly to show they were committed to the cause that they got into an awful grant of rights deal that has very little room for flexibility, Florida State’s athletic director Michael Alford got this ball rolling a few months ago when he said out loud that the school was a “national brand” and needs to be able to compete financially with schools in the SEC and Big Ten. He said staying in the ACC as constituted would mean FSU would fall behind maybe as much as $30 million annually if they don’t do something different and also that they would look into challenging the ACC’s grant of rights.
So now Alford and the people at Clemson and a few other schools are floating the idea of tiered payouts from the ACC to the schools based on their value. At this point, everyone gets an equal share of the pie, but FSU and Clemson contend they are basically carrying the Boston Colleges and Syracuses of the world.
Here is the thing: If you don’t share things equally, you have no conference. This is such an intellectually dishonest talking point as it does not and will not work if some schools get treated differently than others. Texas tried to pull this in the Big 12 and it nearly led to the conference completely blowing up.
Again, the grant of rights was a horrific, short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction. Now they’re all stuck with it. As part of it, it would cost a school $120 million to leave the conference and there is very little wiggle room in it to get around that.
That’s why all of these schools, especially the delusional ones like NC State and Virginia, should focus on fixing the problem and getting a better TV deal with more money. And it wouldn’t hurt to that end if they would all fix their football programs to make the conference better and more attractive.
I know. That is hard. That requires good leadership. That requires a bold and visionary strategy and, well, the ACC apparently lacks that. This thing where all of these schools are trying to get out of the ACC grant of rights is silly because at the end of the day, most of them are in a far better place now than they would be if they were free agents.
The offseason is often silly season in college athletics but this — a conference that has the basic structure and footprint to be extremely successful — talking about breaking up is about as silly as it gets.
Virginia. NC State. Give me a damn break.
https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/paul-zeise/2023/05/16/paul-zeise-sports-column-college-acc-pitt-nil-transfer-portal-tv-rights-espn/stories/202305160076
Virginia Tech hasn’t been relevant since Frank Beamer was on campus and, quite frankly, I could make a case since Beamer had Mike Vick. Miami hasn’t been relevant since Luke Campbell and Nevin Shapiro were paying for players and offering bounties.
North Carolina, Virginia and NC State???? Ha, ha! What are the people at those schools smoking? Because it must be good!
Give me a break, will you please? I mean Lawrence Taylor, Bullet Bill Dudley and Bill Cowher ain’t walking through that door anytime soon for goodness sake.
You want to tell me that Clemson is looking for a bigger bang for its buck from the ACC? OK, I might listen, as the Tigers have had some high-level success, been to the playoffs six times and won two national championships.
But even Clemson as a national brand is probably still way overrated. And, quite frankly, the Tigers have had far more the feel of a team that is winning against a weak conference than a national elite powerhouse like Alabama or Georgia.
Clemson at least has a case to be upset with the TV contracts of the ACC because the Tigers have done their part.
Those other six schools of the seven who are looking into perhaps challenging the ACC’s grant of rights so as to go out and get better deals from other conferences have to be kidding themselves. This can’t be real, can it?
These reports can’t be legitimate. They just can’t. Virginia? Virginia? What in the heck does Virginia bring to the ACC football conference? And what would it bring to one of the other conferences?
The Big Ten already has a team to beat up in the D.C. market in Maryland and the SEC already has a high academic team to beat up in Vanderbilt. What would these other conferences and their television partners want with Virginia as a football program?
And here is the thing: While on-field success is a key ingredient, the branding and size of the fan base and markets are far more important, and in that regard, I am not sure any one of these schools other than Florida State and Clemson is attractive.
That’s what makes this current discussion of schools leaving the ACC and breaking the grant of rights they all signed all so utterly delusional.
But let’s back up. In case you haven’t heard, the ACC is having their annual spring meetings this week in Florida. The major discussion is about how the ACC’s revenue streams — mostly TV money — are projected to lag behind the other major conferences and what is a possible remedy.
Here is a really good Cliffs Notes version of the issues from CBS Sports:
“Action Network and Sports Illustrated are reporting Florida State, Clemson, Miami, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia and Virginia Tech as the seven schools that have met with legal teams in recent months to examine the league's grant of rights. The ACC's exclusive media rights deal with ESPN runs through 2036, several years after the conclusion of the deals that soon begin for the SEC and Big Ten. The SEC enters a 10-year media rights deal with ESPN worth $3 billion in 2024, while the Big Ten enters a seven-year deal with NBC, CBS and FOX worth more than $7 billion in total value beginning this season.”
The ACC schools screwed themselves, to be honest, and now they are unhappy about it. They all wanted so badly to show they were committed to the cause that they got into an awful grant of rights deal that has very little room for flexibility, Florida State’s athletic director Michael Alford got this ball rolling a few months ago when he said out loud that the school was a “national brand” and needs to be able to compete financially with schools in the SEC and Big Ten. He said staying in the ACC as constituted would mean FSU would fall behind maybe as much as $30 million annually if they don’t do something different and also that they would look into challenging the ACC’s grant of rights.
So now Alford and the people at Clemson and a few other schools are floating the idea of tiered payouts from the ACC to the schools based on their value. At this point, everyone gets an equal share of the pie, but FSU and Clemson contend they are basically carrying the Boston Colleges and Syracuses of the world.
Here is the thing: If you don’t share things equally, you have no conference. This is such an intellectually dishonest talking point as it does not and will not work if some schools get treated differently than others. Texas tried to pull this in the Big 12 and it nearly led to the conference completely blowing up.
Again, the grant of rights was a horrific, short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction. Now they’re all stuck with it. As part of it, it would cost a school $120 million to leave the conference and there is very little wiggle room in it to get around that.
That’s why all of these schools, especially the delusional ones like NC State and Virginia, should focus on fixing the problem and getting a better TV deal with more money. And it wouldn’t hurt to that end if they would all fix their football programs to make the conference better and more attractive.
I know. That is hard. That requires good leadership. That requires a bold and visionary strategy and, well, the ACC apparently lacks that. This thing where all of these schools are trying to get out of the ACC grant of rights is silly because at the end of the day, most of them are in a far better place now than they would be if they were free agents.
The offseason is often silly season in college athletics but this — a conference that has the basic structure and footprint to be extremely successful — talking about breaking up is about as silly as it gets.
Virginia. NC State. Give me a damn break.
https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/paul-zeise/2023/05/16/paul-zeise-sports-column-college-acc-pitt-nil-transfer-portal-tv-rights-espn/stories/202305160076
