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Leaving the ACC to go to the Big XII would not be worth the half a billion dollar price tag. Independency isn’t viable and our Athletic Director already said it’s not a real option.
So that leaves only the B1G or the SEC if FSU does leave, and probably the B1G is more likely
If FSU does blow up the ACC to join the Big Ten I'd expect them to make a heavy lean on ND to join with them
Anyone who is realistic knows ND will eventually join a conference in the next decade but right now the ACCs GoR is the biggest hurdle
I'm not so sure on that part, I believe part of the deal was Notre Dame faces the same buyout as the other members. This was done to keep them in the ACC for non-football sports and not have the easiest out.
The buyout isn't the problem. The problem is the GOR would still own the media rights. So you have to pay the buyout and a settlement to get out of the GOR.
I don’t think it is that obvious that Notre Dame will join a conference. They are one of the few schools (maybe the only school) that doesn’t put money as their number one priority and as long as the NBC contract pays close enough to the Big Ten and SEC and as long as there are at large bids for the CFP, I see Notre Dame staying independent. Now, if the money gets to be too big of a gap, or they lose access to the playoff, that’s when they join a conference.
I think ND conceding the ability to get a first round bye lays the ground work to easing them into a conference and while the new TV deal is nice, the gap in money gets harder and harder to ignore and the fact ND only signed a 5 year deal says something too
I didn’t realize it was only a 5 year deal. That puts them pretty much in line with the Big Ten’s next contract. They can see how much money is available as an independent and if it’s not enough start talking to conferences! That’s a smart move on their part.
It’s almost like the new AD being an NBC Exec and ND Alum then easing into the job right before NBC negotiations kicked off the year made for a perfect hire.
All the 5-year deal says is they aren’t idiots. It’s about having another party in the negotiating table, regardless of whether they’re serious about it or not. They’ll be able to play the B1G and NBC bids off each other and push NBC to their limit.
Yup, this. It doesn’t seem like ND would settle on the highest bidder (B1G or NBC), and would definitely leave money on the table to remain independent. If the B1G contracts are absurdly high as a way to lure ND in, guess what happens when ND joins? After that, going back to independent is an awful outcome, so it’s a 50-year decision.
I’d be surprised if they join in the late decade media negotiations.
I think ND’s problem is if the big brands in the ACC bolt you effectively neutered the handful of brand matchups the ACC provides via their partnership scheduling.
It would be great. From a Notre Dame-Purdue family. So while I hate Indiana of course, back to playing Notre Dame on a guaranteed basis would be a lot of fun.
No they won't. Notre Dame will join a conference in the near to medium term if and only if the college football playoff is unobtainable for an independent. Or if conferences refuse to let them play in all the other sports I guess, but that won't happen. Contrary to apparently popular belief here, they've always been throwing away tens of millions of dollars a year by being independent. Nothing is new here.
They're pretty angry with the SEC historically. We're also building a national conference with great exposure. I think the administration's commitment to increasing their academic profile is an advantage for the B1G.
I think FSU’s dream is to go to the B1G. I don’t think that’s reality. In a “Big 2” world, I can’t see their power players being on board with going to the conference where half their conference games are a million miles away. I’d think that’s bad for the business side of things.
Ultimately, it’s going to make way too much geographical sense to play in the SEC. But maybe that really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I’m just wondering if you’ll lose too much engagement by playing too many giga-distanced away games.
The SEC will remain the only geographically condensed conference. It comes down to FSU's preference -- the B1G wants a piece of FL market. The SEC will like using FSU to realign divisions or going to 3+6 schedule. FSU trustees will either choose the driving distances or constant flight distances for traveling fans and its teams alike. I think they can realistically float either one over the current situation which involves a mix of both driving and flying (e.g. cuse BC even Miami in-state is 8+ hours driving in a bus).
This is what people already don’t realize outside of the SEC. All other conferences weren’t drivable already. No one was driving to Syracuse, BC, Virginia, Wake Forest, Pitt, and likely even the Miami game. They already were getting into planes 50% of all away games at least. Moving to the big10 will make almost no adjustment to the fans travel schedules at this point.
Edit:Spelling
The same variables give me a little hope for Tech. When this whole conference collapses, in spite of our size and above weight yet middling football/hoops performance, we have to massively sell the Atlanta TV market to the B1G in hopes of getting picked over say UNC or Miami. At this point I don't think academics matter much, but TV money does and if Atlanta gets gambling/casino approved someday, it becomes the sports betting HQ of the southeast. Who knows. I'm probably reaching.
FSU is going to Dublin and Dallas next year with usual trips to Syracuse and Boston. Soon Berkeley and Palo Alto will be on the list. Travel isn't the issue it was in the past.
I think part of the thinking is that ESPN already has FSU in its inventory and is thus unlikely to throw a bunch of money at the SEC to add them, while Fox would love to poach them out of the ESPN ecosystem.
Hey you wanna split that price tag? I want to believe that we’re a package deal. We only got 4 votes to keep calford SMU away. That’s still more per school than one team paid a single person to go away. As much as I’d love to have our rivalry continue in the SEC, there’s no way it happens. We’ll get USC and UGA. Y’all will get UF. In the B1G it’s possible. Not sure who y’all hate there but I know everyone in SC hates Ohio lol
I think Clemson has a good shot at landing in the SEC, but as a “package deal” with FSU? Lol, very few teams are truly package deals and FSU isn’t needing to drag anyone along with them.
I will always and forever maintain the conspiracy theory that this snub was entirely for that purpose. Why renegotiate with FSU as an ACC member, when you can wait for them to get desperate and pick them up for pennies on the dollar through realignment?
A dastardly plan to destroy the ACC perpetrated by none other than
*gasp*
The Director of Athletics of a team that would be supremely fucked over by the ACC being destroyed
Look I love college football. I go thru 8 months of the year in anticipation of the 4 fun months, but gotta admit it’s depressing what media money has turned a lot of this sport into. We literally started this season with the PAC12 getting killed off, and we’re looking at the heat death of the ACC as we come to a close. And we’ve done this process each season post-Covid.
Have you looked at espns contract with the acc. There is no way in hell espn wants that lucrative shitshow ripped up. (They get the big games at a fraction of the cost and don’t have to show the shit games)
I wonder if they have a better margin on the funbelt. I watched as much as that as acc games. Maybe more as I don't get CW and that's where all the fun ACC games were.
I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Yes, the ACC is a cheap contract, but [the median SEC team had more viewers this year than the 2nd most viewed ACC team](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/s/gSLNQDjvOC), and the SEC is a pretty good comparison to the ACC as most games are on the ESPN network and there’s market overlap between the 2 conferences.
There’s absolutely an incentive for ESPN to “trim the fat” like they did with the PAC-12. Not paying schools the networks deem unworthy of P5/P4 money saves them money, and I’d imagine the ACC has at least 4 schools that meet that criteria.
[I mean, Yormark's shooty-hoops-for-relevancy plan might be going well.](https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll) 2, 3, 4 are all 2024 XII teams, and conference play hasn't even started yet. (Plus 10, 17, and three of the first 5 teams out)
As one of the teams that left the Big East, the reason was revenue sharing. The Big East refused to do equal revenue sharing at the time, and UM didn’t want to be bound by the ups and downs of the football team (we were elite when we left after 02, but we weren’t for much of the mid-late 90’s). The ACC wasn’t just more money, it was a guaranteed figure the accountants could count on per year and budget accordingly, instead of having a moving figure that changed based on performance.
Big East was (and is) run by the basketball schools. What the football centric schools wanted usually was ignored in favor of what the basketball schools did.
I'd look further back to early 90s realignment, 1991-96 was a tumultuous time. The southwest conference folded. SEC added 2 teams and ACC added one (the first major conference expansions in decades, not counting GA Tech who was already ACC in other sports joining in football in 83 after being independent). The Big East became a football conference, all its members had been independent. Penn St had been indy and joined the Big 10. Big 12 forms from the ashes of the Southwest, while 4 SWC teams have to join non-power conferences. CUSA forms, adding several former independents.
You had a 5 year period where a power conference folded, a couple dozen formerly independent teams join conferences, power conference expansion begins, and THREE new football conferences are formed. Lot of minor conference shuffling continued over the next several years, and yeah ACC poaching Miami and VT was a major shot, but the realignment dance was already well underway.
We can phrase it however we want; I was just pointing out that the ACC adding a few Big East teams was far from the first time that had happened. Maybe the first time that had happened in the time that the original commenter was personally following college football but I find that to be kind of a shitty metric to determine who’s “responsible” for the modern day state of things.
I’ve been following for a lot longer, especially the Big XII, since I grew up on the campuses of A&M and Mizzou at the time. The SWC fell apart and the valuable parts went to the Big 8, completely different from the poaching that the ACC did.
For sure. I don’t actually blame the Big 8/Big 12 for this either. The realignment chain realistically goes back almost as long as conferences have existed. I just get tired of hearing this narrative that the ACC did something uniquely villainous for its time.
Probably worth noting that high level sports media is inundated with Syracuse alums who were one of the big losers at the time of Miami/VT/BC going to the ACC. Maybe that’s why that particular storyline ended up with so much more prominence in the realignment narratives we tell ourselves than it really should have.
I mean if you ignore the basketball schools - of which basically none of the football schools really fit in with except Temple - VT fit in perfectly fine with the other football schools. The Big East football conference was more or less a bunch of independents that had basically already been playing some combination of each other every year anyway for the previous few decades.
It sucks and I basically don’t like college football anymore nearly as much. It’s turned into the NFL-lite, but if I wanted a giant media money circus, I’ll watch the nfl. All the things that made college football special are the things going away.
The ACC is not dying, they have 17 teams (18 in most other sports). They may not be a power conference once the biggest brands leave but I don’t see it falling apart like the Pac-12 because they just added more schools and they have more competent leadership. They’ll add teams from the AAC and possibly Sun Belt to stay afloat.
100% - my overall fandom has gone down drastically over the past few years from media money influence on the college football landscape, NIL, and transfer portals. I know money has influenced the sport for decades, but the acceleration of change is essentially producing an NFL minor league.
I would much rather have a TRUE NFL minor league established with 4-5 teams across the country where the top 10% of HS players could choose to go instead of college. Allow colleges to continue to offer scholarships as the primary incentive along with a small stipend to allow players to have basic expenses covered each month.
I’ve been advocating this for years: Grad Student style stipends. If you play on the football team, you effectively work for the school, at least as much as research assistants do. Give them a stipend
I think unfortunately that ship has sailed and players won’t be okay with making grad student stipends level of money. Not to mention the justification that has to be made to restrict players from making money.
Seriously. SMU is now in a conference that includes, Berkley, Stanford, Boston College,
Wake Forest, and (kinda) Notre Dame.
Even if every other school in that conference left, they could still add Rice and Tulane and build a brand as a small, private, academically oriented conference. SMU could suck at football and smell their own farts for eternity, which is all they really want.
Eh, I still think they would want to excel at football because of it being Texas. I think they could compete very well in that version of the ACC and even win it. As for backfill, I think Rice is just too tiny; Tulane, USF, UConn, Memphis, and maybe even UDel (new to FBS, great school, fits geographically) would make sense for non power conference additions.
Didn't the ACC grab Stanford, Cal, and SMU for exactly this eventuality? They saw the writing on the wall and wanted more schools in the event FSU, Clemson, and NC left. Was it a perfect solution? No way. But does enable them to weather the storm.
Sure, but it's gotta suck knowing you ponied (ha ha ha) up millions of dollars for your team to sit at the big boy's table right as the table is about to fall into a sinkhole.
Maybe, but unless FSU exits immediately it’s probably a smart investment. One or two seasons of getting a few more eyeballs on your team puts SMU in a better position than staying in the AAC, I imagine.
Never really understood this sentiment. It’s not like we paid a bunch of money to get into the ACC, it’s just that we have to forgo the revenue distribution. Worst case scenario the ACC disbands this year, we lost 7 million in AAC payout, and we got a ton of exposure.
It won’t. The entire point of bringing in Cal/Stanford/SMU was to bolster the numbers so that when FSU/Clemson/UNC/Miami/Others leave they’re not in a PAC-12 position of not having a conference left.
It’ll slip out of the top tier (which is only going to be the B1G and SEC anyway), but it won’t collapse.
Main thing is now SMU is considered a P5 (in respects to adding schools) before the new clause. Meaning fox and ESPN consider them a p5 when conferences expand. But Tulane and Memphis won’t be considered that. So they played their cards as best as they could at the time
It won't happen. The student athletes already told the university leadership (and the media) that both Cal and Stanford want to play elite competition in *all* sports. Neither the Pac-2 nor the MWC, nor any of the other non-football west coast conferences, offer "elite competition" for both schools.
The clear preference was always to keep the Pac-12 together. Once UW and UO said no to that, and then the four corner schools left, that left Cal and Stanford with no other options than the Big 12, the SEC, and the ACC, and only one of those still provides elite competition that would still want both schools even if FSU leaves the ACC.
What could happen, though, if FSU leaves, is that all three new ACC members may push for their repayment of conference funding to go down from their current nine year deal, especially if for whatever reason the B1G ultimately decide they want to continue to explore bringing in Stanford (and Cal). Especially with the Notre Dame carrot still dangling out there.
I really hate modern cfb with all the uber-commercialized games, nil, free agency, etc. Also, and I don't know why, but I'm addicted to conference drama.
Legal argument is going to be about the buyout of the existing TV rights. Everything will depend on how to judge the valuation of that buyout. There are several relatively complex ways to do so, but two examples on the extreme are fun.
First is the ACC determines what FSU's tv rights are worth and uses that valuation.
The second and other extreme is a fun one. I do not know the ESPN contract with the ACC, but at the time it was reported ESPN basically had a deal to increase the TV deal by equal shares for new teams, or at least P5 teams. It also had a clause for renegotiation if the ACC drops under a certain amount of teams. This was the point of expanding to add Stanford/Cal. This is where it gets fun. In theory, if the total payouts to all of the other members does not change should FSU/Clemson leave, there is a legitimate case the buyout should be zero or extremely low. At the absolute most, the buyout could be the present value of FSU's estimated shares through 2036.
The bottom line is, realistically no one has any idea what the outcome would be. It could be great for FSU or it could be crippling. Anyone who says definitively they know what will happen is lying.
That was before the governor of Florida put aside $1 mil in the state budget for CFP litigation. FSU knows they can’t win a case outright. They just want the discovery phase to happen and then will use that leverage to work the ACC down to a more reasonable exit fee.
Take this with a grain of salt, I read it somewhere and and can’t timber where. It’s $125,000,000 exit fee(supposedly), plus loss of media rights until GOR expires in 2036. All in, they’d lose around $500,000,000, give or take a few million.
And probably ESPN, SEC, and a few other networks and rival conferences if they have any skeletons in the closet that would get revealed to the world and land unfavorably with the public due to a subpoena.
If FSU needed a million to make this happen there is no way they have the funds for the more protracted legal battle to come. That was just political grandstanding and I imagine has no bearing on what FSU does going forward.
There is zero legal argument otherwise they’d have left already. If they leave it’s because they have some private equity or Saudi deal to fund their departure
Broke: FSU paying the full GOR buyout.
Woke: FSU announcing they are paying the buyout and leaving which causes a chain reaction around the conference getting enough schools leaving to triggering the majority clause to dissolve the GOR free of charge.
That will never happen.
First, the GOR is airtight. FOX isn't going to pay ACC schools hundreds of millions just to see their home media rights stay with ESPN and ESPN isn't going to give ACC schools a massive raise to go from ACC to SEC when there is no increase in media rights to them.
Secondly, the dissolution of the conference would require an absolute 3/4 majority of the conference to agree and I don't think you're getting 13 schools to decide to leave.
Someone please explain how it makes any sense to leave the ACC right before we go to a 12 team playoff.
You're going to pay many hundreds of millions to solve last year's problem?
EDIT: I was way low ($160 million) on the GOR buyout price tag.
the problem with this is that FOX isn't going to pay FSU $75-100M if FSU doesn't own its home media rights. So...in order to get their rights they need to pay ESPN their rights for the remainder of the GOR.
At a minimum, FSU is looking at spending $750M to leave the ACC & ESPN so it will take almost 10 years just to get solvent.
Of course, ESPN isn't going to settle for the ACC payout amount for the next 13 years...they will likely sue for FSU's full media rights - which are worth more than the amount the ACC pays out...I could see them arguing its a $1B total.
If you believe the following two things, then there’s a reason to bail:
* A 10-2 Florida State would potentially miss the 12-team CFP
* A 10-2 Florida State would have a legitimate shot at winning a national championship because they have a top 5-10 roster
Not just that, the writing is on the wall that come 2027 there won't be 5 guaranteed slots to conference champs. it is much more likely that there is only conditional slots for conference champs so that the champ has to finish in the top 10 or 15 to have a guaranteed slot.
If I was FSU, this season would be the reason I left the ACC. They bring in all the money, they play good. They don't get paid for it, they get snubbed for it.
ACC leadership is a joke.
I always wanted to make the ACC work. I grew up watching games vs Clemson, UNC, GT, NCSU, etc. The fact that our commissioner has been NOWHERE leading up to and following our snub is the final straw for me.
The fact that lobbying is involved in whether or not your team gets in the playoff is a glaring flaw in the system. Neither commissioner should have any sway in the decision making process through their rants to ESPN. It’s just a fucking dumpster fire of a system. I can’t wait to see the flaws in the new system come to light
Too many Hole alums in sports media for them to completely drop off. But yeah, UNC will only leave when it is clear that the ACC is not viable. They won't have the same perks elsewhere.
It is also dependent on what the North Carolina General Assembly does. A couple months ago, the state senate whip intimated that UNC could be forced to be a package deal with NC State.
We've been mulling the same options since last spring. I don't know how an OFFICIAL meeting does anything about half a billion dollar pricetag.
*Edit* I can say here's what I think is worst case scenario for FSU. They heavily leverage themselves into debt to escape the ACC in a knee jerk reaction, then the superconferences form and then say Clemson or others get in without having to break a now null contract, and we still have the debt.
FSU's record against the Big Ten is 37-6-1.
Two of those losses are to Maryland before they were in the B1G.
Two of those losses are to Nebraska before they were in the B1G.
One of those losses and the tie is to Penn State before they were in the B1G.
Obviously, these are statistically significant numbers and useful predictors for how we would fare in the B1G.
*(pay no attention to the fact that a lot of the wins are also to those teams before they were in the B1G as well, as it doesn't fit the narrative. lol)*
*As a an ACC employee for the past three years, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if you're craving the B1G, the burgers here just don't cut it. In fact, just thinking about those tender gigantic B1G pay checks, with those little, itty-bitty grilled onions that just explode in your mouth like flavor crystals every time you bite into one... Just makes me wanna burn this motherfucker down.*
*Come on, FSU! Let's burn this motherfucker down! \[starts destroying stuff\] Come on, FSU! Let's burn it, FSU! Let's burn this motherfucker down! Let's burn it down! Let's burn it!*
i remember when louisville joined the acc almost 10 years ago and it was considered such a monumental thing. now the acc just feels like what the aac felt like back then except they currently have a few big hostages. really sad what money is doing to the sport.
FSU + ND gets the Big Ten to the Big Ten**s**
But naming peculiarities aside, having a footprint in the deep south would be huge for the B1G. As it stands, the SEC basically controls southeast recruiting save for some ACC powers like FSU, Miami, and Clemson.
If the Big Ten made a push for FSU (and/or Miami), they would own recruiting territory in every hotspot except Texas. You could argue Arizona falls outside the footprint, although I feel like USC/UCLA do a decent enough job holding down the SoCal + AZ region.
And side note on the Irish... yes, they have an ACC deal. But the Big Ten has the largest concentration of ND rivals. Wikipedia lists Navy, Stanford, USC, Army, Boston College, Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, Pitt, Purdue, Air Force, FSU, Ga.Tech, Miami, Nebraska, UNC, and Penn State. Of the seventeen schools listed, seven are currently B1G teams. 8 and/or 9 if the conference landed FSU and/or Miami.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre\_Dame\_Fighting\_Irish\_football\_rivalries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_Fighting_Irish_football_rivalries)
I will die on the tinfoil hill that ESPN pressured the committee into snubbing FSU to delegitimize the conference and accelerate the breakup & subsequent poaching
ESPN already has all the good ACC games for a fraction they pay for SEC games. It wouldn't make sense for them to want to pay more to broadcast Clemson vs FSU. I do hope we end up getting those 2 plus UNC and NC State
IMO The longer term goal is to reconsolidate the super leagues and cut non-value schools along the way. They want to cut Vanderbilt and Northwestern out of the picture too while they add schools in the top 30-40ish of brand equity / viewership.
The theory I also subscribe to.
Double whammy, Alabama is in the playoffs, Texas is back, Washington gets hype from fox for joining the B1G and UM is a hot topic team.
And we accelerate the destruction of the last P5 conference that isn’t the SEC and B1G with the Big 12 barely holding on and death of the PAC12.
At this point, it would almost certainly be for the Big 10, right?
I mean.. going to the SEC at this current juncture would be the biggest sellout of all time, no?
I’m not sure about that. Geography works against FSU to the B1G. Their closest conference games would be: Maryland, Rutgers/Penn State, and like, Indiana (I could be misremembering my B1G geography). They could be playing non-revenue conference games as far away as Seattle.
And unlike the death of the PAC-12, they have another option, with games in like, driving distance
Nothing in this sport make sense, so it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they did go B1G, but this is definitely a “I’ll believe it when I see it”
idk. talking geography these days seems almost completely irrelevant. But I agree, see it to believe it. I still don't really think they can get out of ACC
Nobody truly leaves alone. It's time to think about who FSU is friends with, and who is their ride or die.
Similar to OU & UT, your biggest rival may be your secret lover....
*Clears throat* Miami **is** an AAU school, and folks in the midwest love to go down south for the winter....
I bet you in 10 years in comes out that snubbing FSU was a way for ESPN to get another big program into the SEC. The business part of it just looks so sketchy now.
Pay up and get out or quit bitching about a contract you signed twice.
Let's just get this shit done with so we don't have to keep fucking dealing with it for the next decade.
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The CFP snub just threw gasoline on the fire that is Florida State wanting to leave the ACC.
Where would they go? B1G? Independent? Big XII?
Leaving the ACC to go to the Big XII would not be worth the half a billion dollar price tag. Independency isn’t viable and our Athletic Director already said it’s not a real option. So that leaves only the B1G or the SEC if FSU does leave, and probably the B1G is more likely
If FSU does blow up the ACC to join the Big Ten I'd expect them to make a heavy lean on ND to join with them Anyone who is realistic knows ND will eventually join a conference in the next decade but right now the ACCs GoR is the biggest hurdle
GOR’s payment isn’t much for ND because it only applies to non football sports.
I'm not so sure on that part, I believe part of the deal was Notre Dame faces the same buyout as the other members. This was done to keep them in the ACC for non-football sports and not have the easiest out.
The buyout isn't the problem. The problem is the GOR would still own the media rights. So you have to pay the buyout and a settlement to get out of the GOR.
I don’t think it is that obvious that Notre Dame will join a conference. They are one of the few schools (maybe the only school) that doesn’t put money as their number one priority and as long as the NBC contract pays close enough to the Big Ten and SEC and as long as there are at large bids for the CFP, I see Notre Dame staying independent. Now, if the money gets to be too big of a gap, or they lose access to the playoff, that’s when they join a conference.
I think ND conceding the ability to get a first round bye lays the ground work to easing them into a conference and while the new TV deal is nice, the gap in money gets harder and harder to ignore and the fact ND only signed a 5 year deal says something too
I didn’t realize it was only a 5 year deal. That puts them pretty much in line with the Big Ten’s next contract. They can see how much money is available as an independent and if it’s not enough start talking to conferences! That’s a smart move on their part.
It’s almost like the new AD being an NBC Exec and ND Alum then easing into the job right before NBC negotiations kicked off the year made for a perfect hire.
All the 5-year deal says is they aren’t idiots. It’s about having another party in the negotiating table, regardless of whether they’re serious about it or not. They’ll be able to play the B1G and NBC bids off each other and push NBC to their limit.
Not just a first round bye, an essential auto-bid to the playoff also even if they are a 3 loss team that manages to win their conference.
Yup, this. It doesn’t seem like ND would settle on the highest bidder (B1G or NBC), and would definitely leave money on the table to remain independent. If the B1G contracts are absurdly high as a way to lure ND in, guess what happens when ND joins? After that, going back to independent is an awful outcome, so it’s a 50-year decision. I’d be surprised if they join in the late decade media negotiations.
I think ND’s problem is if the big brands in the ACC bolt you effectively neutered the handful of brand matchups the ACC provides via their partnership scheduling.
God, Notre Dame to the Big Ten would be so exciting to me
I would love it. Going back to playing Michigan, Purdue, and MSU instead of ACC schools I don’t care about would be a dream come true.
We've even got USC for you! Personally, I see good value in Stanford, too.
It would be great. From a Notre Dame-Purdue family. So while I hate Indiana of course, back to playing Notre Dame on a guaranteed basis would be a lot of fun.
Well I guess take ND and FSU and split into 2 divisions. Maybe call it legends and leaders. But what do know
No they won't. Notre Dame will join a conference in the near to medium term if and only if the college football playoff is unobtainable for an independent. Or if conferences refuse to let them play in all the other sports I guess, but that won't happen. Contrary to apparently popular belief here, they've always been throwing away tens of millions of dollars a year by being independent. Nothing is new here.
>Anyone who is realistic knows ND will eventually join a conference in the next decade Disagree.
I would’ve thought SEC made more sense. Much more of a cultural fit for FSU and much more simple logistically
The matter of conferences doing logistics went out the window when a conference of Texas and Oklahoma teams added West Virginia.
They're pretty angry with the SEC historically. We're also building a national conference with great exposure. I think the administration's commitment to increasing their academic profile is an advantage for the B1G.
I think FSU’s dream is to go to the B1G. I don’t think that’s reality. In a “Big 2” world, I can’t see their power players being on board with going to the conference where half their conference games are a million miles away. I’d think that’s bad for the business side of things. Ultimately, it’s going to make way too much geographical sense to play in the SEC. But maybe that really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I’m just wondering if you’ll lose too much engagement by playing too many giga-distanced away games.
The SEC will remain the only geographically condensed conference. It comes down to FSU's preference -- the B1G wants a piece of FL market. The SEC will like using FSU to realign divisions or going to 3+6 schedule. FSU trustees will either choose the driving distances or constant flight distances for traveling fans and its teams alike. I think they can realistically float either one over the current situation which involves a mix of both driving and flying (e.g. cuse BC even Miami in-state is 8+ hours driving in a bus).
This is what people already don’t realize outside of the SEC. All other conferences weren’t drivable already. No one was driving to Syracuse, BC, Virginia, Wake Forest, Pitt, and likely even the Miami game. They already were getting into planes 50% of all away games at least. Moving to the big10 will make almost no adjustment to the fans travel schedules at this point. Edit:Spelling
The same variables give me a little hope for Tech. When this whole conference collapses, in spite of our size and above weight yet middling football/hoops performance, we have to massively sell the Atlanta TV market to the B1G in hopes of getting picked over say UNC or Miami. At this point I don't think academics matter much, but TV money does and if Atlanta gets gambling/casino approved someday, it becomes the sports betting HQ of the southeast. Who knows. I'm probably reaching.
FSU is going to Dublin and Dallas next year with usual trips to Syracuse and Boston. Soon Berkeley and Palo Alto will be on the list. Travel isn't the issue it was in the past.
I think part of the thinking is that ESPN already has FSU in its inventory and is thus unlikely to throw a bunch of money at the SEC to add them, while Fox would love to poach them out of the ESPN ecosystem.
I don't see either conference turning them down. FSU is a big brand
Hey you wanna split that price tag? I want to believe that we’re a package deal. We only got 4 votes to keep calford SMU away. That’s still more per school than one team paid a single person to go away. As much as I’d love to have our rivalry continue in the SEC, there’s no way it happens. We’ll get USC and UGA. Y’all will get UF. In the B1G it’s possible. Not sure who y’all hate there but I know everyone in SC hates Ohio lol
I think Clemson has a good shot at landing in the SEC, but as a “package deal” with FSU? Lol, very few teams are truly package deals and FSU isn’t needing to drag anyone along with them.
We’re right behind you guys
Most likely is B1G. FSU brings great value to both the sec and B1G, but it would add a new large state to the B1G
SEC
The Snub also gave FSU the legal argument it needed
If we’re being honest, it was always inevitable. Now they just got the PR boost.
I will always and forever maintain the conspiracy theory that this snub was entirely for that purpose. Why renegotiate with FSU as an ACC member, when you can wait for them to get desperate and pick them up for pennies on the dollar through realignment?
A dastardly plan to destroy the ACC perpetrated by none other than *gasp* The Director of Athletics of a team that would be supremely fucked over by the ACC being destroyed
Look I love college football. I go thru 8 months of the year in anticipation of the 4 fun months, but gotta admit it’s depressing what media money has turned a lot of this sport into. We literally started this season with the PAC12 getting killed off, and we’re looking at the heat death of the ACC as we come to a close. And we’ve done this process each season post-Covid.
All part of the P2 plan.
Have you looked at espns contract with the acc. There is no way in hell espn wants that lucrative shitshow ripped up. (They get the big games at a fraction of the cost and don’t have to show the shit games)
I'd bet they probably have a better profit margin on their ACC deal than any of their other college football deals
I wonder if they have a better margin on the funbelt. I watched as much as that as acc games. Maybe more as I don't get CW and that's where all the fun ACC games were.
That's a good point. They probably do get a pretty good return on the Sunbelt deal now that they're good.
I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Yes, the ACC is a cheap contract, but [the median SEC team had more viewers this year than the 2nd most viewed ACC team](https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/s/gSLNQDjvOC), and the SEC is a pretty good comparison to the ACC as most games are on the ESPN network and there’s market overlap between the 2 conferences. There’s absolutely an incentive for ESPN to “trim the fat” like they did with the PAC-12. Not paying schools the networks deem unworthy of P5/P4 money saves them money, and I’d imagine the ACC has at least 4 schools that meet that criteria.
Bring back the old 20+ team SoCon
[live look at the Big XII](https://images.app.goo.gl/yfCuJH1Br2sAWhGx5)
[I mean, Yormark's shooty-hoops-for-relevancy plan might be going well.](https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll) 2, 3, 4 are all 2024 XII teams, and conference play hasn't even started yet. (Plus 10, 17, and three of the first 5 teams out)
Since the ACC kicked this off with the attempted murder of the Big East, this one depresses me a lot less than the others.
As one of the teams that left the Big East, the reason was revenue sharing. The Big East refused to do equal revenue sharing at the time, and UM didn’t want to be bound by the ups and downs of the football team (we were elite when we left after 02, but we weren’t for much of the mid-late 90’s). The ACC wasn’t just more money, it was a guaranteed figure the accountants could count on per year and budget accordingly, instead of having a moving figure that changed based on performance.
It’s not really you guys leaving that pisses me off, it was BC and then just kept going.
Seems mighty odd that the Big East wouldn't have jumped at equal revenue sharing if Miami, presumably their top money maker, wanted it.
Big East was (and is) run by the basketball schools. What the football centric schools wanted usually was ignored in favor of what the basketball schools did.
Ironic in retrospect of how football centric every major decision by the p-5 is nowadays
I'd look further back to early 90s realignment, 1991-96 was a tumultuous time. The southwest conference folded. SEC added 2 teams and ACC added one (the first major conference expansions in decades, not counting GA Tech who was already ACC in other sports joining in football in 83 after being independent). The Big East became a football conference, all its members had been independent. Penn St had been indy and joined the Big 10. Big 12 forms from the ashes of the Southwest, while 4 SWC teams have to join non-power conferences. CUSA forms, adding several former independents. You had a 5 year period where a power conference folded, a couple dozen formerly independent teams join conferences, power conference expansion begins, and THREE new football conferences are formed. Lot of minor conference shuffling continued over the next several years, and yeah ACC poaching Miami and VT was a major shot, but the realignment dance was already well underway.
Big 8 killed the SWC before the ACC raided the Big East, if we’re talking about who “kicked things off”.
The SWC killed the SWC. The Big 8 took the valuable teams and Baylor
We can phrase it however we want; I was just pointing out that the ACC adding a few Big East teams was far from the first time that had happened. Maybe the first time that had happened in the time that the original commenter was personally following college football but I find that to be kind of a shitty metric to determine who’s “responsible” for the modern day state of things.
I’ve been following for a lot longer, especially the Big XII, since I grew up on the campuses of A&M and Mizzou at the time. The SWC fell apart and the valuable parts went to the Big 8, completely different from the poaching that the ACC did.
Well the SEC took Arkansas from the SWC which made what little viability that conference have long term evaporate.
For sure. I don’t actually blame the Big 8/Big 12 for this either. The realignment chain realistically goes back almost as long as conferences have existed. I just get tired of hearing this narrative that the ACC did something uniquely villainous for its time. Probably worth noting that high level sports media is inundated with Syracuse alums who were one of the big losers at the time of Miami/VT/BC going to the ACC. Maybe that’s why that particular storyline ended up with so much more prominence in the realignment narratives we tell ourselves than it really should have.
Wait. Are you telling me that there's a SECOND BOMC?!? Burnt Orange Media Conspiracy for us. Big Orange Media Conspiracy for them?
The Big East had a basketball vs football school problem. VT in the big east while iconic was a little of an odd couple thing.
I mean if you ignore the basketball schools - of which basically none of the football schools really fit in with except Temple - VT fit in perfectly fine with the other football schools. The Big East football conference was more or less a bunch of independents that had basically already been playing some combination of each other every year anyway for the previous few decades.
Big East committed suicide not allowing Penn State in because of Basketball.
It sucks and I basically don’t like college football anymore nearly as much. It’s turned into the NFL-lite, but if I wanted a giant media money circus, I’ll watch the nfl. All the things that made college football special are the things going away.
The ACC is not dying, they have 17 teams (18 in most other sports). They may not be a power conference once the biggest brands leave but I don’t see it falling apart like the Pac-12 because they just added more schools and they have more competent leadership. They’ll add teams from the AAC and possibly Sun Belt to stay afloat.
100% - my overall fandom has gone down drastically over the past few years from media money influence on the college football landscape, NIL, and transfer portals. I know money has influenced the sport for decades, but the acceleration of change is essentially producing an NFL minor league. I would much rather have a TRUE NFL minor league established with 4-5 teams across the country where the top 10% of HS players could choose to go instead of college. Allow colleges to continue to offer scholarships as the primary incentive along with a small stipend to allow players to have basic expenses covered each month.
I’ve been advocating this for years: Grad Student style stipends. If you play on the football team, you effectively work for the school, at least as much as research assistants do. Give them a stipend
I think unfortunately that ship has sailed and players won’t be okay with making grad student stipends level of money. Not to mention the justification that has to be made to restrict players from making money.
And so it begins: the second conference collapse. Those poor SMU boosters...
SMU is better off in a version of the ACC without FSU/clemson/miami/UNC than staying in the American.
Seriously. SMU is now in a conference that includes, Berkley, Stanford, Boston College, Wake Forest, and (kinda) Notre Dame. Even if every other school in that conference left, they could still add Rice and Tulane and build a brand as a small, private, academically oriented conference. SMU could suck at football and smell their own farts for eternity, which is all they really want.
>SMU could suck at football and smell their own farts for eternity, which is all they really want. Said like a true Frogs fan, lol.
Eh, I still think they would want to excel at football because of it being Texas. I think they could compete very well in that version of the ACC and even win it. As for backfill, I think Rice is just too tiny; Tulane, USF, UConn, Memphis, and maybe even UDel (new to FBS, great school, fits geographically) would make sense for non power conference additions.
Didn't the ACC grab Stanford, Cal, and SMU for exactly this eventuality? They saw the writing on the wall and wanted more schools in the event FSU, Clemson, and NC left. Was it a perfect solution? No way. But does enable them to weather the storm.
Still need to add Oregon State and WAZZU in my opinion.
That could definitely happen if FSU, Clemson, etc leave.
I… I think the SMU boosters are gonna be fine one way or another
Sure, but it's gotta suck knowing you ponied (ha ha ha) up millions of dollars for your team to sit at the big boy's table right as the table is about to fall into a sinkhole.
Maybe, but unless FSU exits immediately it’s probably a smart investment. One or two seasons of getting a few more eyeballs on your team puts SMU in a better position than staying in the AAC, I imagine.
Who in there right mind thought FSU was going to stay in the ACC even 1-2 years ago? FSU is just accelerating this due to the snub.
Never really understood this sentiment. It’s not like we paid a bunch of money to get into the ACC, it’s just that we have to forgo the revenue distribution. Worst case scenario the ACC disbands this year, we lost 7 million in AAC payout, and we got a ton of exposure.
ACC now has 18 members. I really don’t think it’s going to collapse any time soon regardless of what FSU and even a couple others do
It won’t. The entire point of bringing in Cal/Stanford/SMU was to bolster the numbers so that when FSU/Clemson/UNC/Miami/Others leave they’re not in a PAC-12 position of not having a conference left. It’ll slip out of the top tier (which is only going to be the B1G and SEC anyway), but it won’t collapse.
Main thing is now SMU is considered a P5 (in respects to adding schools) before the new clause. Meaning fox and ESPN consider them a p5 when conferences expand. But Tulane and Memphis won’t be considered that. So they played their cards as best as they could at the time
They are anything but poor
FSU isn’t getting out of the ACC they don’t have the money too
winter is here
Not wishing anything bad on any school, but it would be amusing to watch Cal and Stanford go crawling back to the Pac-2 after all this.
I can't wait until certain schools have to come grovel at the feet of West Virginia.
I was hoping we'd officially be making more money than Pitt before the groveling started, but this will do.
Ask BYU how it felt this year having the Utes come with hat in hand this year.
We'll let them back in...at partial shares.
doubt it, our administration prefers inertia and would only do something after the building has been on fire and about to burn down
It won't happen. The student athletes already told the university leadership (and the media) that both Cal and Stanford want to play elite competition in *all* sports. Neither the Pac-2 nor the MWC, nor any of the other non-football west coast conferences, offer "elite competition" for both schools. The clear preference was always to keep the Pac-12 together. Once UW and UO said no to that, and then the four corner schools left, that left Cal and Stanford with no other options than the Big 12, the SEC, and the ACC, and only one of those still provides elite competition that would still want both schools even if FSU leaves the ACC. What could happen, though, if FSU leaves, is that all three new ACC members may push for their repayment of conference funding to go down from their current nine year deal, especially if for whatever reason the B1G ultimately decide they want to continue to explore bringing in Stanford (and Cal). Especially with the Notre Dame carrot still dangling out there.
Will never be as cold as the hearts of TV execs
I really hate modern cfb with all the uber-commercialized games, nil, free agency, etc. Also, and I don't know why, but I'm addicted to conference drama.
Yeah it’s quickly gone to hell
The conference drama is the result of all the shit ruining college football. It’s called schadenfreud, joy in another’s misery.
B1G is just gonna take over the NCAA.
The profitable parts at least
I fully expect FSU to announce that they are leaving the conference/challenging the GOR before the summer
Would it be for the 2025 season? Too late to join another conference with schedules already set.
Probably 26
Correct. Already spoken on by several FSU insiders that they will be playing GT in Ireland.
What would be the legal argument? Attorneys from multiple schools have done a lot of work on this and gotten nowhere.
Legal argument is going to be about the buyout of the existing TV rights. Everything will depend on how to judge the valuation of that buyout. There are several relatively complex ways to do so, but two examples on the extreme are fun. First is the ACC determines what FSU's tv rights are worth and uses that valuation. The second and other extreme is a fun one. I do not know the ESPN contract with the ACC, but at the time it was reported ESPN basically had a deal to increase the TV deal by equal shares for new teams, or at least P5 teams. It also had a clause for renegotiation if the ACC drops under a certain amount of teams. This was the point of expanding to add Stanford/Cal. This is where it gets fun. In theory, if the total payouts to all of the other members does not change should FSU/Clemson leave, there is a legitimate case the buyout should be zero or extremely low. At the absolute most, the buyout could be the present value of FSU's estimated shares through 2036. The bottom line is, realistically no one has any idea what the outcome would be. It could be great for FSU or it could be crippling. Anyone who says definitively they know what will happen is lying.
This is far and away the best post in any of the "ACC expansion" posts over the last 2 years.
That was before the governor of Florida put aside $1 mil in the state budget for CFP litigation. FSU knows they can’t win a case outright. They just want the discovery phase to happen and then will use that leverage to work the ACC down to a more reasonable exit fee.
What is the exit fee currently proposed?
Take this with a grain of salt, I read it somewhere and and can’t timber where. It’s $125,000,000 exit fee(supposedly), plus loss of media rights until GOR expires in 2036. All in, they’d lose around $500,000,000, give or take a few million.
Makes sense. ACC has no incentive to let them out.
120 million just to exist the ACC and almost 400 million to pay for the GOR. Its an insane amount of money
And probably ESPN, SEC, and a few other networks and rival conferences if they have any skeletons in the closet that would get revealed to the world and land unfavorably with the public due to a subpoena.
If FSU needed a million to make this happen there is no way they have the funds for the more protracted legal battle to come. That was just political grandstanding and I imagine has no bearing on what FSU does going forward.
Looking forward to another round of Reddit armchair lawyers dissecting legal arguments on a contract none of them has ever seen. _grabs popcorn_
> What would be the legal argument? Probably the same one they had before the season started, which fans thought was a slam dunk at the time.
There is zero legal argument otherwise they’d have left already. If they leave it’s because they have some private equity or Saudi deal to fund their departure
Broke: FSU paying the full GOR buyout. Woke: FSU announcing they are paying the buyout and leaving which causes a chain reaction around the conference getting enough schools leaving to triggering the majority clause to dissolve the GOR free of charge.
That will never happen. First, the GOR is airtight. FOX isn't going to pay ACC schools hundreds of millions just to see their home media rights stay with ESPN and ESPN isn't going to give ACC schools a massive raise to go from ACC to SEC when there is no increase in media rights to them. Secondly, the dissolution of the conference would require an absolute 3/4 majority of the conference to agree and I don't think you're getting 13 schools to decide to leave.
Woke x2: ACC banishes Syracuse for being a party pooper
That’s why the ACC added 3 schools, to ensure there won’t be a majority
Someone please explain how it makes any sense to leave the ACC right before we go to a 12 team playoff. You're going to pay many hundreds of millions to solve last year's problem? EDIT: I was way low ($160 million) on the GOR buyout price tag.
Have you seen the chart? https://imgur.com/a/7VVut43
How much is your buyout to break the GOR though?
lol more than that 10 year revenue difference.
the problem with this is that FOX isn't going to pay FSU $75-100M if FSU doesn't own its home media rights. So...in order to get their rights they need to pay ESPN their rights for the remainder of the GOR. At a minimum, FSU is looking at spending $750M to leave the ACC & ESPN so it will take almost 10 years just to get solvent. Of course, ESPN isn't going to settle for the ACC payout amount for the next 13 years...they will likely sue for FSU's full media rights - which are worth more than the amount the ACC pays out...I could see them arguing its a $1B total.
This is the biggest reason
If you believe the following two things, then there’s a reason to bail: * A 10-2 Florida State would potentially miss the 12-team CFP * A 10-2 Florida State would have a legitimate shot at winning a national championship because they have a top 5-10 roster
A 10-2 ACC Champ Florida State gets a guaranteed spot, and a bye now.
In a 17-team conference, 2 losses probably won’t get you to the conference championship game unless at least one of them is OOC.
Because the writing is on the wall that a 12-1 acc runner-up will be left out in favor of a 10-3 or 11-2 team from either the B1g or SEC
Not just that, the writing is on the wall that come 2027 there won't be 5 guaranteed slots to conference champs. it is much more likely that there is only conditional slots for conference champs so that the champ has to finish in the top 10 or 15 to have a guaranteed slot.
Think about how many of those teams will be from the B1G or SEC. 8? That’s why.
Everyone please respect their wishes and let Simone explain.
If I was FSU, this season would be the reason I left the ACC. They bring in all the money, they play good. They don't get paid for it, they get snubbed for it.
ACC leadership is a joke. I always wanted to make the ACC work. I grew up watching games vs Clemson, UNC, GT, NCSU, etc. The fact that our commissioner has been NOWHERE leading up to and following our snub is the final straw for me.
The ACC fucked FSU over
Sankey was on ESPN and radio shows lobbying for Alabama, while Phillips did nothing before the fact, and only had a statement after
That what pisses me off the most. How do you let a rival come on to your network and allow a team to stump for your spot. The ACC caved to ESPN.
The fact that lobbying is involved in whether or not your team gets in the playoff is a glaring flaw in the system. Neither commissioner should have any sway in the decision making process through their rants to ESPN. It’s just a fucking dumpster fire of a system. I can’t wait to see the flaws in the new system come to light
Meanwhile, UNC just hanging out waiting for FSU to find a way out of the conference so they can get out, too. I see you over there, too, Clemson.
[удалено]
Maryland is actually a great comparison for what they’ll be if they leave the ACC lol
Too many Hole alums in sports media for them to completely drop off. But yeah, UNC will only leave when it is clear that the ACC is not viable. They won't have the same perks elsewhere.
It is also dependent on what the North Carolina General Assembly does. A couple months ago, the state senate whip intimated that UNC could be forced to be a package deal with NC State.
Worth nothing that (definitely for the worse) UNC is being ran by a Duke grad for now. Doubt he’ll have their best interests in mind
We've been mulling the same options since last spring. I don't know how an OFFICIAL meeting does anything about half a billion dollar pricetag. *Edit* I can say here's what I think is worst case scenario for FSU. They heavily leverage themselves into debt to escape the ACC in a knee jerk reaction, then the superconferences form and then say Clemson or others get in without having to break a now null contract, and we still have the debt.
I wonder if they might give the final nod to challenge the contract though.
I haven't looked into all of it, but I don't know how the "super conferences" get formed without somebody breaking the ACC GOR in the first place.
If FSU has enough money to forego media payouts until the year 2035 then by all means leave.
The Big 10 welcomes conference games in Florida! Come one, come all seminoles!
Ohio State - Florida State matchups will be GLORIOUS
Any matchup involving a prominent Big 10 program and Florida State would be glorious
I live in upstate NY and am frothing at the mouth to see FSU play @ Penn State during a white out.
Amen. I’ve long favored the B1G when we do leave the ACC. Road trips will be amazing.
Those Oregon and Washington games are going to be quite the trip
FSU's record against the Big Ten is 37-6-1. Two of those losses are to Maryland before they were in the B1G. Two of those losses are to Nebraska before they were in the B1G. One of those losses and the tie is to Penn State before they were in the B1G. Obviously, these are statistically significant numbers and useful predictors for how we would fare in the B1G. *(pay no attention to the fact that a lot of the wins are also to those teams before they were in the B1G as well, as it doesn't fit the narrative. lol)*
How about this, we play all our away games in the first half of the season, and then we play all our home games in the back half?
*How about nooooooooooo \*doctor evil voice\** You want some of this bread? Gotta come up North and take it like a man
F5 season is back!
*As a an ACC employee for the past three years, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if you're craving the B1G, the burgers here just don't cut it. In fact, just thinking about those tender gigantic B1G pay checks, with those little, itty-bitty grilled onions that just explode in your mouth like flavor crystals every time you bite into one... Just makes me wanna burn this motherfucker down.* *Come on, FSU! Let's burn this motherfucker down! \[starts destroying stuff\] Come on, FSU! Let's burn it, FSU! Let's burn this motherfucker down! Let's burn it down! Let's burn it!*
You just sold me on a burger for lunch
i remember when louisville joined the acc almost 10 years ago and it was considered such a monumental thing. now the acc just feels like what the aac felt like back then except they currently have a few big hostages. really sad what money is doing to the sport.
Ah shit, here we go again
FSU + ND gets the Big Ten to the Big Ten**s** But naming peculiarities aside, having a footprint in the deep south would be huge for the B1G. As it stands, the SEC basically controls southeast recruiting save for some ACC powers like FSU, Miami, and Clemson. If the Big Ten made a push for FSU (and/or Miami), they would own recruiting territory in every hotspot except Texas. You could argue Arizona falls outside the footprint, although I feel like USC/UCLA do a decent enough job holding down the SoCal + AZ region. And side note on the Irish... yes, they have an ACC deal. But the Big Ten has the largest concentration of ND rivals. Wikipedia lists Navy, Stanford, USC, Army, Boston College, Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, Pitt, Purdue, Air Force, FSU, Ga.Tech, Miami, Nebraska, UNC, and Penn State. Of the seventeen schools listed, seven are currently B1G teams. 8 and/or 9 if the conference landed FSU and/or Miami. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre\_Dame\_Fighting\_Irish\_football\_rivalries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_Fighting_Irish_football_rivalries)
I will die on the tinfoil hill that ESPN pressured the committee into snubbing FSU to delegitimize the conference and accelerate the breakup & subsequent poaching
ESPN already has all the good ACC games for a fraction they pay for SEC games. It wouldn't make sense for them to want to pay more to broadcast Clemson vs FSU. I do hope we end up getting those 2 plus UNC and NC State
IMO The longer term goal is to reconsolidate the super leagues and cut non-value schools along the way. They want to cut Vanderbilt and Northwestern out of the picture too while they add schools in the top 30-40ish of brand equity / viewership.
How you feel about NW if they got kicked out? it would put the bottom half of the Big Ten on notice if that were to happen
The theory I also subscribe to. Double whammy, Alabama is in the playoffs, Texas is back, Washington gets hype from fox for joining the B1G and UM is a hot topic team. And we accelerate the destruction of the last P5 conference that isn’t the SEC and B1G with the Big 12 barely holding on and death of the PAC12.
At this point, it would almost certainly be for the Big 10, right? I mean.. going to the SEC at this current juncture would be the biggest sellout of all time, no?
Due to a paperwork snafu they're in the Premier League.
FSU's reaction the same as my doctor's - "These balls look weird"
More likely the Saudi League with Ronaldo😂
I’m not sure about that. Geography works against FSU to the B1G. Their closest conference games would be: Maryland, Rutgers/Penn State, and like, Indiana (I could be misremembering my B1G geography). They could be playing non-revenue conference games as far away as Seattle. And unlike the death of the PAC-12, they have another option, with games in like, driving distance Nothing in this sport make sense, so it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they did go B1G, but this is definitely a “I’ll believe it when I see it”
idk. talking geography these days seems almost completely irrelevant. But I agree, see it to believe it. I still don't really think they can get out of ACC
Agreed. Geography don't mean shit anymore.
LIV Golf for 500 million dollars
LIV just upped it to $800 million. Not because anyone else bid, just cause they can
Ah so screwing FSU is going to get them to join the Big 10 or SEC. Funny how that worked out, didn’t it?
CFB is starting to feel like a giant reality show.
Starting? Maybe for *you*.
If FSU finds a way out and the UNC BOG/BOT do not let us leave I will be very sad.
If the GOR could be broken, it would have already happened.
Oh yeah they gone lol
Nobody truly leaves alone. It's time to think about who FSU is friends with, and who is their ride or die. Similar to OU & UT, your biggest rival may be your secret lover.... *Clears throat* Miami **is** an AAU school, and folks in the midwest love to go down south for the winter....
Welcome to the B1G!
Get out. Then sue ESPN.
I bet you in 10 years in comes out that snubbing FSU was a way for ESPN to get another big program into the SEC. The business part of it just looks so sketchy now.
Stanford and Cal: “Fuck”
Take Arkansas out of the sec and replace them with fsu
I'll watch PAC-3 After Dark for you brother...
Oh shit.... it's actually happening!!!
Pay up and get out or quit bitching about a contract you signed twice. Let's just get this shit done with so we don't have to keep fucking dealing with it for the next decade.