Conference realignment could soon impact the Atlantic Coastal Conference.
Florida State University President Richard McCullough said the current landscape of the distribution of revenue within the ACC is not enough during a board of trustees meeting Wednesday.
“We, of course, are not satisfied with our current situation,” McCullough said. “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 were a major change in the revenue distribution within the conference, within the ACC conference itself.”
The ACC has seen minimal impact as a result of conference expansion in the past several years. While programs like UCLA and USC will jump over to the Big Ten Conference beginning in 2024 or like Oklahoma and Texas will join the Southeastern Conference in the same year, the ACC hasn’t had a program poached to join another rival — although it is a legitimate possibility.
“I would have to say that my current assessment of the situation after very deep analysis is that I believe FSU will have to at some point consider very seriously leaving the ACC unless there were a radical change to the revenue distribution,” McCullough said. “I don’t think this is anything that anybody hasn’t necessarily thought of but I wanted to make that statement to the board.”
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN July 27 that the conference is monitoring and evaluating how conference expansion could impact where it jockeys compared to others in the financial situation.
Florida State and the ACC are currently in agreement with ESPN to serve as its media rights deal, and the agreement extends through 2035-36.
The Seminoles remain as the most recent ACC team to win the college football national championship, doing so in the Bowl Championship Series in 2013. They also most recently made the College Football Playoff in 2014.
A range of factors are at play for current college conferences undergoing realignment and expansion. While the ACC hasn’t had one program join or leave from another conference, Florida State may have started getting the ball rolling.
“The issue at hand is what can we do to allow ourselves to be competitive in football and get what I think selfishly is the revenue that we deserve in our media situation,” McCullough said. “I think this continues to be a very difficult issue.”
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“We, of course, are not satisfied with our current situation. 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 were a major change in the revenue distribution within the conference, within the ACC conference itself. That has not happened. We have those discussions. They’re ongoing at all times, and continue to explore that situation. FSU helps to drive value and will drive value for any partner but we have spent a year trying to understand how we might fix the issue. There are no easy fixes to this problem, this challenge. But a group of us, many of us, have spent literally a year. Chairman Collins. We’ve explored every possible option that you could imagine because all options are on the table.
“We continue to explore all of those options.
“The issue at hand is what can we do to allow ourselves to be competitive in football and get what I think selfishly is the revenue that we deserve in our media situation. I think this continues to be a very difficult issue.
“I would have to say that my current assessment of the situation after very deep analysis is that I believe FSU will have to at some point consider very seriously leaving the ACC unless there were a radical change to the revenue distribution. I don’t think this is anything that anybody hasn’t necessarily thought of but I wanted to make that statement to the board.
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ACC, ESPN agree to 20-year rights deal that will lead to 2019 launch of ACC Network – ESPN
