UPDATE (2:25 p.m.): Years of private grumblings, months of public frustration and 50 minutes over Zoom came down to a three-word phrase Florida State board of trustees chairperson Peter Collins said Friday morning.
FSU vs. ACC.
The fight over their future together will now play out in the courts — plural — after the conference and one of its biggest brands filed separate suits against each other over a 24-hour period.
Only half a billion dollars and the entire college football ecosystem hang in the balance. You can read our full, detailed story on the day’s events here.
UPDATE (12:35 p.m.): The ACC, it turns out, has also filed suit against Florida State. That was filed in Mecklenburg County, N.C. That document is asking a judge to rule that the ACC’s grant of rights is enforceable, which would prevent the Seminoles from leaving without paying a nine-figure exit fee.
The ACC’s argument, in short: Florida State accepted and kept money from the ACC, therefore agreeing that its contracts were valid. The conference also argues that North Carolina, not Florida, is the proper venue for the legal dispute.
UPDATE (11:43 a.m.): A copy of Florida State’s lawsuit against the ACC has been released. It’s a 38-page complaint for declaratory judgment, and the first line of the introduction says a lot:
“The stunning exclusion of the ACC’s undefeated football champion from the 2023-2024 College Football Playoff (”CFP”) in deference to two one-loss teams from two competing Power Four conferences crystalized the years of failures by the ACC to fulfill its most fundamental commitments to FLORIDA STATE and its members.”
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips just released this statement:
“Florida State’s decision to file action against the Conference is in direct conflict with their longstanding obligations and is a clear violation of their legal commitments to the other members of the Conference. All ACC members, including Florida State, willingly and knowingly re-signed the current Grant of Rights in 2016, which is wholly enforceable and binding through 2036. Each university has benefited from this agreement, receiving millions of dollars in revenue and neither Florida State nor any other institution, has ever challenged its legitimacy.
“As a league, we are proud of the successes of our student-athletes and that the ACC has won the most NCAA National Championships over the past two and half years while also achieving the highest graduation success and academic performance rates among all FBS conferences, so it is especially disappointing that FSU would choose to pursue this unprecedented and overreaching approach.
“We are confident that the Grant of Rights, which has been honored by all other universities who signed similar agreements, will be affirmed by the courts and the Conference’s legal counsel will vigorously enforce the agreement in the best interests of the ACC’s current and incoming members.”
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UPDATE (10:54 a.m.): Florida State University’s seismic board of trustees meeting is over. The Seminoles have unanimously approved a seven-count lawsuit against the ACC in an attempt to leave their conference home of three decades.
The lawsuit is expected to be filed in Tallahassee, but it might not become public today (depending on how long the court system takes to process it).
That’s all for now. We’ll sift through our notes and come back with a more detailed story soon.
UPDATE (10:41 a.m.): Florida State University has filed a seven-count lawsuit against the ACC to start its exit from the conference. The vote from the board of trustees was unanimous.
UPDATE (10:41 a.m.): An all-time great quote from FSU’s chief legal officer, Carolyn Egan. The ACC keeps its grant of rights contract at the league office, but Egan has been able to repeatedly view unexecuted, old copies of it.
“I do have what the internet has,” Egan said.
This, again, is a document that helps define FSU’s athletic future.
UPDATE (10:37 a.m.): FSU athletic director Michael Alford called this a “simple math problem.” That math boils down to a $30 million gap between what the ACC distributes to its schools and what the Big Ten and SEC payouts are.
UPDATE (10:29 a.m.): We’re getting the legal argument now to pave the way for a withdrawal from the ACC. The summary, so far, is that the $572 million to leave the league is “unenforceable.” There’s an antitrust argument, too, as it relates to Florida state law.
Another argument includes a breach of contract.
“The ACC has failed to appropriately give FSU the value of its athletic program media rights,” outside counsel David Ashburn said. “In fact, they diluted those agreement rights going forward.”
President Richard McCullough said voting to authorize a legal exit is what’s best for FSU.
UPDATE (10:12 a.m.): Chairperson Peter Collins said Florida State must challenge the grant of rights to get out of the ACC. He said this wasn’t because of the College Football Playoff snub, to be clear.
An outside attorney, David Ashburn, is going through financial figures now. He said the penalty to leave the ACC is $572 million.
UPDATE (10:08 a.m.): If there was any doubt about the subject of the meeting, it’s over now. Chairperson Peter Collins is discussing the $30 million financial gap between what FSU gets from the ACC and peer programs get from the SEC and Big Ten.
“Today we’ve reached a crossroad in our relationship with the ACC,” Collins said.
UPDATE (10:03 a.m.): The pivotal meeting has started. More than 2,100 people are watching its YouTube stream.
DEVELOPING: Florida State’s future in the ACC is expected to become clearer today during the university’s emergency board of trustees meeting. The lone item of new business on the agenda: “Legal matters related to Department of Intercollegiate Athletics.”
Those legal matters are not specified, but we’ll find out soon enough. We’ll update this post throughout the day with the latest from this Zoom meeting, which is scheduled to start at 10 a.m.
Speculation has been building for weeks about whether FSU is ready and able to break away from the ACC, its conference home for the last three decades. Those conversations became public in February when athletic director Michael Alford presented financial estimates for FSU compared to its peers in the SEC and Big Ten. Those figures showed a $30 million gap, which did not seem sustainable if the Seminoles want to continue competing for championships.
When the talks became public again at an August board meetingthe tone became even more serious. Trustee Drew Weatherford, the former FSU quarterback, said that unless something changed with the ACC’s finances, it was a matter of how and when Florida State left the league, not if.
Those questions of how and when have lingered since then and became more prominent after 13-0 FSU was excluded from the College Football Playoff in favor of 12-1 Alabama. That snub has its own set of legal issues, including an antitrust investigation the Attorney General’s Office launched last week.
Other potentially relevant matters include whether there’s a role for private-equity investment in FSU, as Sportico reported in August.
Stay tuned.
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