"I don't think it's good for our league for them to be out there barking like that. I'd rather see them be a good member of the league, support the league and if they have to make a decision, then so be it. Pay for the exit fee, wait for your grant of rights that you've given and then in 2036, when those rights return to you, do whatever you want.
"When you have a general counsel and the university president and the board of trustees says I'm a member of this conference and you sign a document that says I'm granting my rights to you and you have my authority to go negotiate my rights to a network and the league does that on your behalf, I'm not sure how you can just say, 'Just kidding. I didn't like the deal that was struck and now I want to get out of it.' Any contract, it obligates you to what you agreed to on the front end. So I'm scratching my head, wondering what are you talking about.
"A lot of schools, a lot of individuals are going to have to make decisions about what their future looks like. I don't see this configuration lasting in perpetuity."-UNC AD Bubba Cunningham.
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Is Florida State actually going to leave the ACC?
[Nicole] Auerbach: This has to go all the way back to February when they had that board meeting where athletic director Michael Alford went off about this issue. And really, it’s like fighting words, right? ...
...These are other members of the league, other people in college sports being like, what is Florida State doing? What are they throwing their weight around, screaming about how much value they bring? They’re a member of a conference. They’re in a deal that’s been locked in through 2036. We get it they’re not happy, but what leverage do they really have if they don’t have an invite to the Big Ten or the SEC?
[The reply is], well, we’re (Florida State), [we're] going to continue to be loud about it. We’re going to continue to raise hell about it because we’re not happy with where the ACC got in the spring meetings about unequal revenue sharing and an incentive-based revenue distribution based on how far you go in the CFP or March Madness and adjusting so you can maybe make a couple million dollars extra because they don’t think that’s going to close the $30 million a year gap that they’re going to have with who they’re going to be recruiting against.
Still, they don’t have a landing spot, but clearly, they’re getting closer to saying, well, maybe we’re just going to give notice to the ACC and bet on ourselves and whether that looks like, once we’re available, then maybe the Big Ten or the SEC or their media partners will want us or be interested in engaging with us; whether that means they’re going to try to band together enough ACC schools to try to break out so that the grant of rights is voided or go independent; I don’t really know what that next step is.
Half Ass U has not thought this half ass through.
[Giving notice of leave] does not address the exit fee, the grant of rights, how much it would cost to get out of that or a landing spot. But that’s part of the reason they’re trying to put a little pressure and urgency around it, even though it’s just a lot of words right now.
[Bruce] Feldman: I remember some FSU board people popping off about this like eight years ago. I feel like this surfaces every once in a while and they get loud about it and then they get tied up, in this case, with the grant of rights. But the other thing, as Nicole was talking about 2036 is not around the corner. That is a long time from now. But also, not only do they not have leverage in this with a landing spot, part of this deal is tied into ESPN. Why is ESPN going to then bid against itself? Because I don’t know who else is going to jump in this.
… Networks don’t actually go against themselves like this.
This is one of many fissures in FSU's "thinking" and is developed further, I believe by Feldman, below. In a nutshell, say FSU got an invitation from another conference that also has a partnership with ESPN. ESPN is already paying FSU as part of its long-term deal with the ACC. Why would ESPN pay more for one of its properties if that property just renames the street it lives on?
But the discussants do not mention this other key factor: Disney-owned ESPN is laying off talent and retrenching and is not interested in expanding its sports presence.
And as Nicole said, FSU is a strong brand and obviously they’ve gotten better in football in the last couple of years under Mike Norvell after backsliding. But they’re also not Ohio State and Michigan in terms of a TV presence. They’re big, but they’re not that big. They can talk about an existential crisis, but I don’t know if that changes the reality of how they’re tied into this.
...
The roundtable then turns to the PAC:
[Stewart] Mandel: ...If Arizona, Arizona State and Utah all decided today, we all want to go to the Big 12, can Brett Yormark do that? Or as we’ve been told recently, his TV partners want to stop at 14. They agreed to do the pro-rata for the Power 5 schools, that doesn’t mean they want to have to pay for three more of those. So there would be no room left for those other two.
That is, ESPN and Fox agreed that if B.Y. grabbed a PAC school, the grabbee would receive a full share of the TV money. Thus, Colorado got a full $32M share. Hairy Boner would get a full share. ASU and Utah would get a full share--but B.Y. is not going to buffalo Disney/ESPN! it may be contractually obligated to pay the full share but they're not going to like paying it and does B.Y. really want to piss off Walt Disney?
B1G:
Feldman: From everything I’ve heard, TV does not want to pay more for this, nor do some of the schools...
...
Feldman: Geographically, Stew and I had this conversation a little, but not with the Big Ten exclusively. He started talking about the ACC, maybe his dream scenario…
[Stewart] Mandel: The Atlantic and Pacific conference.
Feldman: Yeah, so Washington and Oregon and I said to him, look at a map, the furthest west you get from that is Pitt. This isn’t like a lot of Big Ten schools who are in the Central time zone. And so what you have though, with these two programs, which we all think they’re really strong athletic programs and they are in pretty big markets, Seattle and Washington, but does this make a little sense travel-wise for the non-revenue sports with UCLA and USC? Because it is a long way to get to pretty much everywhere in the Big Ten for that them.
The transcription, or the speaking, is scattered. What Bruce Feldman is saying is that Stewart Mande's "dream scenario" of an A&P conference (a modern conception of the "Airplane Conference" championed most by Pitt in the 1960's is a pipe dream--and a nightmare--for the "Olympic sports". It has dawned on some, I think with an Arizona Republic writer in particular, that the thing to do is to cut the knot of the revenue sports and the non-revenue. Why must a school play all sports in one conference? The model is right before their eyes: Notre Dame, the hockey schools in the Northeast, the lacrosse schools (Syracuse of the ACC, Johns Hopkins of the B1G). Hell, Brett Yormark wants to cut the knot between football and basketball! If you cut the knot you don't have to worry about the USC women's volleyball team schlepping to Piscataway to play Rutgers. An A&P conference is absolutely feasible in football, maybe even in men's and women's basketball, but in swimming, nah-ah. They don't have to be together.
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Speaking of pipe dreams, here's one from The Tennessean:
Here's my plan for three 20-team NCAA super-
conferences. Who's in? Who's out?
Big Ten
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Rutgers, Southern Cal, UCLA, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, Miami, Virginia.
...
Big 12
Baylor, BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Colorado, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech, West Virginia, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, Louisville, North Carolina State, Syracuse, Virginia Tech.
...
SEC
Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina, Pittsburgh.
More than other conferences, the SEC’s expansions have been mindful of the conference’s brand and well-manicured Southern identity. Clemson, FSU and UNC would be no-brainers for the tapestry the SEC created. Clemson and FSU are located in the SEC footprint. In many ways, their identity is more reflective of the SEC than the ACC.
UNC would provide an additional big brand and take the SEC into neighboring terrain. The SEC likes to expand into border states. Plus, the SEC Network is headquartered in Charlotte. The Tar Heels fit.
Pittsburgh is my wild card. Pitt would match Missouri as the SEC’s most curious additions. Maybe Pitt could become an adopted member of the South. Fans of a certain age remember Pitt sitting atop college football. Pittsburgh is a football city, albeit tilted toward the NFL. Pittsburgh is often compared to Birmingham, which headquarters the SEC.
As crazy as it sounds, there is reason in the madness. There are, attenuated to be sure, southern roots at Pitt. Johnny Majors, Tennessee legend and Heisman runner-up coached Pitt to its last national championship, then left to go home, then was fired and came back. When he left Pitt Majors was replaced by another good old boy from the South, Jackie Sherrill. Yet another, Jimmy Johnson was on Pitt's coaching staff in this golden age. The Johnny Majors Classic, the two-year home-and-home series between the "Panthers" and "Volunteers." Pittsburgh is a football town like every town in the SEC but, big caveat, a "Steelers" town rather than a "Panthers" town. According to Pitt alum and player Ralph Cindrich we did pay players in the glory days, just like the SEC has always done. I actually could see Pitt being accepted as an honorary member of the South. "Fans of a certain age remember Pitt on top of college football," well, that age would certainly be advanced.
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Back to The Athletic:
Now football, the people I’ve talked to around here on the West Coast think they can embrace it, it’s doable. It’s the other sports, it’s baseball, it’s the basketballs, it’s soccer, it’s a lot of the other sports...there’s talk of how there could be an eastern pod where it’s Maryland, Rutgers, Penn State, Ohio State or something like that. And now if you did it on the West Coast and you had Washington, Oregon, USC, UCLA, again, the TV parts of this would have to get sorted out...But I think logistically that is a little more manageable for some of the non-revenue sports than having to play almost your entire schedule where you are taking really, really long flights and having these extended road trips where you may be hitting three schools at once.
