Florida State’s leaving the ACC seems to be a matter of when at this point.
School president Richard McCullough told the university’s board of trustees during a meeting on Wednesday that FSU would “very seriously” consider leaving the ACC if the revenue distribution didn’t “radically change.”
The issue at hand that has increased the buzz around a possible conference jump by Florida State is the $30 million gap in TV revenue between what FSU gets from the ACC and what Big Ten and SEC schools get from their respective conferences.
With the ACC locked into a TV rights deal with ESPN through 2036, the gap could widen further.
“We of course are not satisfied with our current situation,” McCullough said during the meeting, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. “We love the ACC. We love our partners at ESPN. Our goal would be to continue to stay in the ACC but staying in the ACC under the current situation is hard for us to figure out how we remain competitive unless there was a major change in the revenue distribution within the conference in the ACC conference itself.”
Trustee and former FSU quarterback Drew Weatherford put it a bit more bluntly.
“Unless something drastic changes on the revenue side at the ACC, it’s not a matter of if we leave,” Weatherford said, according to the Tampa Times. “It’s a matter of how and when we leave.”
And trustee Justin Roth equated it to “death by 1,000 cuts and each cut is a $30 million cut over the next 13 years.”
A departure from the ACC won’t be an easy maneuver and the conference has made an effort to appease the concerns of some of its most important members over revenue.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told reporters during its football kickoff that “revenue generation continues to be a priority,” the Tampa Times reported.
The conference also said that it adjusted its revenue-sharing model to award schools a bigger piece of the pie based on their athletic program’s success.
Still, Florida State seems destined to change conferences at some point in the future, but it won’t be easy.
The exit fee is said to be roughly $120 million.
Also, FSU would have to figure out how to challenge the grant of rights, which is “the contract in which schools grant the TV rights to their games to the conference, which then distributes the money back to the programs.”
Aug. 15 is when any school would need to let the ACC know that they were planning to leave for the 2024 season.
Roth said he felt it would be ideal for the university to figure out an exit strategy before the deadline.
“We’re working hard on it as you know, and we’ll be back to you,” Chairman Peter Collins said about a plan going forward.
