Florida State president: Have to consider 'very seriously leaving the ACC'
Posted August 2, 2023 4:28 p.m. EDT
Updated August 2, 2023 5:29 p.m. EDT
Florida State University officials said Wednesday the school is considering leaving the Atlantic Coast Conference with some trustees calling for a decision within the next year or sooner.
"FSU will have to, at some point, consider very seriously leaving the ACC unless there were a radical change to the revenue distribution," Florida State president Richard McCullough told the school's Board of Trustees during a public meeting Wednesday.
The ACC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Florida State, which joined the ACC in 1991, is frustrated by the increasing gap in television revenue between the Big Ten and the SEC and other leagues, like the ACC. The gap could reach $30 million per school coming years.
The ACC signed a 20-year television deal with ESPN in 2016. At that time, the league's schools also agreed to a Grant of Rights, which gives the conference control of their TV rights through 2036.
The ACC generated $617 million in revenue in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022. The SEC generated $802 million in total revenue; the Big Ten generated $845 million. The majority of that money comes from television rights. The SEC and, especially, the Big Ten rights deals will jump as the conferences add valuable schools such as Texas, Oklahoma, USC and UCLA in coming years.
McCullough argued that the Seminoles are driving much of the value of the ACC's television contract due to high viewership numbers and, as such, deserve a higher percentage of the deal.
Frustration from Florida State and other schools about the Grant of Rights and the revenue gap boiled over this spring when it was reported that seven league members were meeting to discuss their future. The league has agreed to an uneven revenue distribution based on on-field success, but that is unlikely to close the gap with the other conferences or satisfy Florida State.
Commissioner Jim Phillips said last week at the conference's annual ACC Kickoff event that the league was in a good place.
"I'm well aware of the narrative and stories surrounding the ACC and our members as well as the frustrations of some of our schools on our financials, but these are not new," Phillips said.
"The bottom line is our conference is strong, and I'm extremely bullish about our future together."
Florida State clearly does not agree.
"The alternative of just staying in this conference for the next 13 years and trying to wait for that perfect alignment of the stars is the equivalent of death by 1,000 cuts — and each cut is a $30M cut over the next 13 years," Florida State trustee Justin Roth said during the meeting, which was streamed online.
Roth referenced an August 15th deadline for Florida State to alert the ACC of its plans.
"It would be ideal if we could come up with something before that. Probably unlikely," he said. "Our goal as a university should be to figure out how we exit this TV deal that we currently have in the next 12 months."
Board chairman Peter Collins said he would probably be coming back to the board "pretty soon with some more conversation on this."
It is unclear how Florida State could get around the Grant of Rights issue. McCullough said he and others, including athletic director Michael Alford, have been studying the issue for a year. Collins said Tuesday in an interview with a Florida State-specific outlet that he was not concerned about the Grant of Rights document.
Former Florida State quarterback Drew Weatherford, also a member of the board of trustees, summed up the Seminoles' position.
"Unless something drastic changes on the revenue side at the ACC, it's not a matter of if we leave, in my opinion," he said, "it's a matter of how and when we leave."
