ACC on life support, 7 members getting ready to pull the plug

WhosYourDawggy said:
I get where you are coming from but here is why I think things slow down:

1. There is a history of doing 2 and waiting a decade or more.

2. Both the B1G and the SEC have their hands full with what is going on now - absorbing 2 new teams each, transfer portal, NIL, litigation, new schedules, and the expanded CFP. The B1G has Ore and UW to deal with, or not. To suddenly start trying to expand just doesn't make sense from a perspective that there is already enough disruption.

3. The ACC has the GOR - neither conference wants to get involved with that - they will have to extract themselves first.

4. Both conferences are going to get blow back from the lesser teams who don't want to bring in better teams. At some point Ole Miss, Vandy, MSU, Arky, Ky level teams are going to say, enough. We can't win now and you want to bring in Clemson and FSU? Are you fucking crazy? You are already seeing the SEC having a hard time talking those teams into the 9 game conference schedule.

5. Then you get to the money, although that might should have been no. 1. If you want to deal with 1-4 above, there better be a ton more money. Other than ND, no other teams delivers that. Even Clemson and FSU aren't sure fire $100 million players. So, there better be a lot of money now, or it's not worth the effort - for now. You also have the biggest player on the media block, ESPN in some financial tightening mode.

In some ways, it's better for the SEC and the B1G that the ACC's hands are tied. I think they would much prefer to wait 10 years and see what the landscape is before expanding. If each school is bringing in 100+ million per year, is there really an advantage to getting bigger, especially for the mid and lower-tier teams.

For a long time you read all the time about super conferences, but not so much any more. I think a lot of people just got caught up in the hype and didn't think it through. Why not wait a decade or more to see how the litigation shakes out, see how the expanded CFP works. NIL has already changed massively in just 2 years ... those stupid upfront contracts are toast and teams are spending NIL to keep people on their roster and pick up transfers. Imagine what it will be like in a decade when we may have players unions and players getting paid directly.
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All fair points and to be honest I think the ACC teams are in a terribly tough position to leave at this point.
 
fordman84 said:
Fingers crossed it is an EPL-like relegation league. That would separate it from NFL pretty well and add drama to the top of the league as well as the bottom of the league.
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That’d be awesome, but are programs like Alabama, Ohio State, Texas and USC really going risk going down by voting yes to it. Hell even the mid tier P5 programs would say no. I would love it but I don’t think it’d ever have near the support to go through.
 
Volbound1700 said:
To be fair, with the exception of Clemson and FSU over a decade ago, no one in the ACC has really lived up to hype in Football to deserve increasing the revenue. The league has so much potential but has fallen flat so many times. Clemson is holding up the league with FSU being good in the Jameis Winston era. UNC and Va Tech have made splashes at times but so many other teams, notably Miami and NC State, have not lived up to hype. I can't tell you how many old NCAA Football games had NC State ranked in top 10-20 only to see them flatten that season. Same with Miami.
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It ain’t about living up to hype, being any good or anything similar to those type things anymore. What matters now is how many eyeballs/viewership can you draw…and mainly how many can you draw on your own. Sure, every teams gets better viewership numbers the week(s) their opponent is one of the big names…but that’s because of the opponent. Even my lowly Miners get better viewership numbers when we’ve play Texas and OU.

Only exception I can think of in these last ones is UCLA. On their own, they won’t draw near what USC, OU and Texas will. (But neither can Rutgers, South Carolina, Northwestern, etal. But that’s a whole other discussion.)
 
I believe these schools are just putting pressure on ESPN. Hell, in theory, could 8 ACC teams leave and form a new conference called ACC2 and then invite the other 8 to join and get a new contract?
 
Deep Creek said:
It ain’t about living up to hype, being any good or anything similar to those type things anymore. What matters now is how many eyeballs/viewership can you draw…and mainly how many can you draw on your own. Sure, every teams gets better viewership numbers the week(s) their opponent is one of the big names…but that’s because of the opponent. Even my lowly Miners get better viewership numbers when we’ve play Texas and OU.

Only exception I can think of in these last ones is UCLA. On their own, they won’t draw near what USC, OU and Texas will. (But neither can Rutgers, South Carolina, Northwestern, etal. But that’s a whole other discussion.)
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True but getting eyeballs means winning. Had Miami, VA Tech, Maryland, NC State, etc. lived up to expectations, ACC might have been in par with SEC right now. Especially Miami who disappeared after early 2000s.
 
Volbound1700 said:
True but getting eyeballs means winning. Had Miami, VA Tech, Maryland, NC State, etc. lived up to expectations, ACC might have been in par with SEC right now. Especially Miami who disappeared after early 2000s.
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Hell, Texas and USC have sucked the better part of a decade and their viewership is still way ahead of teams in their conferences that have beaten their asses. And UCLA has sucked worse. More about brand than winning imo.
 
Volbound1700 said:
I believe these schools are just putting pressure on ESPN. Hell, in theory, could 8 ACC teams leave and form a new conference called ACC2 and then invite the other 8 to join and get a new contract?
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This is what has been in the back of my mind.
Why not.
 
You can only play so many games in a season. And the ACC buyout again is roughly $52M? Just wait until the contract runs out in 2036. BTW, Maryland and South Carolina have done so well, right?
 
Deep Creek said:
Hell, Texas and USC have sucked the better part of a decade and their viewership is still way ahead of teams in their conferences that have beaten their asses. And UCLA has sucked worse. More about brand than winning imo.
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They're bluebloods. The modern generation doesn't give a damn about them, but there are a lot of Boomers and Gen X'ers that get nostalgia from watching them.

Heck, Nebraska is 23 - 45 over the last 6 years, but still managed to be 16th in viewership.

You also have to look at demographics. Where are the eyeballs at. They're in Big 10 and SEC country. Of the Top 20 in viewership...

SEC - 7 teams (#2 Alabama/#4 Tennessee/#5 Georgia/#7 LSU/#11 Florida/#18 Tex A&M/#20 Auburn)
Big 10 - 6 teams (#1 Ohio St/#3 Michigan/#9 Penn St/#16 Nebraska/#17 Michigan St./#19 Maryland)
ACC - 2 (#10 Clemson/#15 FSU)
Independent/ACC - 1 (#6 Notre Dame)
PAC 12 - 2 (#12 Oregon/#14 USC)
Big 12 - 2 (#8 tejas/#13 TCU)

The PAC 12 loses #14 USC. Oregon also got a huge boost on their average from playing Georgia.
The Big 12 loses #8 tejas. TCU got a boost from being a potential CFP team. Peeps started tuning into TCU about Week 6.

The surprise is #23 Oklahoma not being in the Top 20, but that supports the Big 10 and SEC being population zones. Once Oklahoma gets into the SEC their number should rise dramatically.

 
douggie said:
You can only play so many games in a season. And the ACC buyout again is roughly $52M? Just wait until the contract runs out in 2036. BTW, Maryland and South Carolina have done so well, right?
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Gotta be more than that, no?

TX/OU paid that ($50 mil each) to get outta the Big 12 one year early. Obviously the math worked where they'd be break even in year 2 of SEC membership.
 
Volbound1700 said:
I believe these schools are just putting pressure on ESPN. Hell, in theory, could 8 ACC teams leave and form a new conference called ACC2 and then invite the other 8 to join and get a new contract?
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I always had this thought but it can't be that easy, right?
 
rfjeff9 said:
Irony of all this ACC bitching is that the GOR is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Keep anyone from leaving. It's shitty ACC leadership that got the schools stuck with so much less money than SEC and B1G, but let's face it - back then were ACC schools collectively showing that they were WORTH more than ESPN agreed to pay them? Are they collectively worth more now?

No.
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They're worth more collectively today but they were dumb enough to lock themselves into a 20 year contract with no way to renegotiate a bigger TV contract over that time
 
A GOR means a conference owns your media rights for the duration of the contract even though you switch conferences.

The Big 12 GOR specified that even if you left the conference in the contracts final year they got your media rights for 2 years.
TX/OU leaving one year before the GOR expired meant they had to pay 2 years anyway. That was the reason they negotiated the $50 million each with the Big 12 annual payout being just $32 million annually.
i.e. Each side deemed the other $14 million was not worth the expenses of a legal battle in courts.

There's no way the ACC is gonna let a team leave 13 years early for $52 million when said team can get that money back from the Big 10 and SEC in a matter of a couple years.

The ACC's $36 million/team X 13 years remaining = $468 million. Even a negotiated half of that for breaking the GOR would be a $234 million buyout. That's if the ACC opted to be nice about things.
That's because $14 million in court costs would be chump change for the ACC to enforce the entire GOR.
 
Deep Creek said:
Hell, Texas and USC have sucked the better part of a decade and their viewership is still way ahead of teams in their conferences that have beaten their asses. And UCLA has sucked worse. More about brand than winning imo.
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Texas and USC have not been as irrelevant as people think when considering rankings, hype, etc. I haven't had much time to post but I would like to go into details to point out the difference.
 
Thiefery said:
😂 😂 They got told to sit downView attachment 101434 and enjoy their milkshake
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Haha, No
The ACC is mulling an amended revenue distribution model that could reward high-performing members with additional revenue. Conference administrators spoke about different options during their annual meetings in Florida this week.

One proposed model shared by Florida State athletic director Michael Alford to 247Sports would have the ACC provide merit-based rewards contingent on winning in the postseason. Individual payouts could clear $10 million per season, a significant increase relative to the $36.1 million total distributed to ACC schools in 2021.

"We have to look at revenue differently," ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN. "And I feel good about that."
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www.cbssports.com

ACC leaders weigh merit-based revenue model amid reports of schools examining grant of rights for exit options

Florida State, Clemson and five others were among those reportedly diving into their legal options
www.cbssports.com www.cbssports.com
 
The big problem with the ACC is that too many schools are not fully committed into investing into football but gladly take in the money.

What better way to motivate schools to spend more on football than to reward in winning in football:
(every school gets a base pay)
* Win vs other P5 conf. - get W more amount
* Win a bowl game - get X more amount
* Win playoff game - get Y more amount
* Win National title - get Z more amount
 
TaikoTiger said:
The big problem with the ACC is that too many schools are not fully committed into investing into football but gladly take in the money.

What better way to motivate schools to spend more on football than to reward in winning in football:
(every school gets a base pay)
* Win vs other P5 conf. - get W more amount
* Win a bowl game - get X more amount
* Win playoff game - get Y more amount
* Win National title - get Z more amount
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That and there's too many smaller, private schools. Not to mention Georgia Tech, which probably has more in common with the private schools. Another issue with the ACC is that UNC and one of the Virginia schools should be marquee cfb brands and they just aren't. Too bad, so sad.
 
Volbound1700 said:
Texas and USC have not been as irrelevant as people think when considering rankings, hype, etc. I haven't had much time to post but I would like to go into details to point out the difference.
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Guess our definitions of "irrelevant" are different.
Big 12 football champions Last 10 years
2013 - Baylor
2014 - Baylor/TCU
2015 - Oklahoma
2016 - Oklahoma
2017 - Oklahoma
2018 - Oklahoma
2019 - Oklahoma
2020 - Oklahoma
2021 - Baylor
2022 - K-State

PAC 12 football champions Last 10 years
2013 - Stanford
2014 - Oregon
2015 - Stanford
2016 - Washington
2017 - USC
2018 - Washington
2019 - Oregon
2020 - Oregon
2021 - Utah
2022 - Utah

Out of 20 chances for conference championships, USC and Texas combined for one, 1, uno. That ain't too swift for big brands IMO.
 
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