Florida State’s lawsuit could blow up the Atlantic Coast Conference. What that means for Blacksburg and Charlottesville.

And Merry Christmas to you, too, Florida State.

On Friday, Florida State filed suit to leave the Atlantic Coast Conference, ticking off a long list of alleged grievances with phrases such as “chronic fiduciary mismanagement and bad faith.”

This is not some distant hissy fit by a school unhappy that its football team didn’t get invited to the NCAA’s four-team football championship playoff — although that omission (some would call it a “snub”) surely factored in things. Instead, this is a legal action that could lead to the break-up of a legendary institution (the ACC) and yet another realignment of college sports. Both of those things, if they come to pass, would ultimately come home to Blacksburg and Charlottesville, especially the former, and not necessarily in good ways.

It’s also something that has already prompted the involvement of one Virginia politician — Attorney General Jason Miyares — and could eventually bring in others. Let’s review what all this means, and why this is a particular danger for Virginia Tech.

This is all about money.

The lawsuit doesn’t make any pretense about this being about the young scholars who engage in an extracurricular activity. This is about the big business of college sports, and the growing disparity between the haves and, well, it’s hard to call them the have-nots, but those who don’t have as much. In 2000, the revenue that each school in the NCAA’s five most powerful conferences received was about the same — and the ACC teams actually received the most. Those figures ranged from $4.8 million per school per year in the Big 12 to $8.1 million in the ACC. By 2023, the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten had pulled out in front, way out in front. Big Ten schools now bring in about $58.8 million per team, SEC schools are at $49.9 million, while the ACC is now in fourth place at $37.9 million. 

This is where Florida State blames the ACC for “chronic fiduciary mismanagement” because the league has a signed a long-term TV deal with ESPN that pays it less money than other leagues get. More dispassionate observers might say this is simply the free market at work — more casual college football fans are interested in seeing those other leagues. The ACC schools have regional appeal, the Big Ten and SCC have national followings. 

Florida State has never quite felt at home in the ACC.

The ACC’s reputation has been as a basketball league, not a football one. Florida State’s strength, though, has been its football program. That strength is partly on the field, but more importantly on TV screens. Nielsen ratings for 2023 say that Florida State has the 10th most-watched college sports program in the country. Alabama is No. 1. No other ACC teams rank in the Top 20, although two others squeeze into the Top 25, with Miami at 23 and Duke at 24. The Seminoles have come to feel they’re in the wrong league. Their football team just completed an undefeated regular season but wasn’t invited to the four-team playoff. The official reason is that Florida State’s star quarterback is hurt and the team isn’t championship-quality without him. FSU fans, though, believe their season was devalued because they play in the ACC, while the future Big Ten and SEC each placed two teams in the final four. (Update: Washington is currently in the Pac-12 but will be joining Michigan in the Big Ten; Texas is currently in the Big 12 but will be joining Alabama in the SEC.)

Let’s keep in mind, though, that Florida State originally joined the ACC precisely because its football program was weaker than the SEC. FSU’s legendary coach, the late Bobby Bowden, once told 24/7 Sports: “Our administration — the president and others — wanted the ACC, which really was better for us. It would have been hard wading through that SEC. Too many good teams in there, boy.”

Florida State hasn’t been the only ACC school upset about money, just the most vocal.

Earlier this year, seven schools — including Virginia and Virginia Tech — were agitating for more revenues from the ACC. The result of that was a new system for divvying up revenues that rewards on-field performance. That, though, wasn’t enough for Florida State. It doesn’t want a bigger slice of the same pie, it wants a bigger pie — even if it has to go elsewhere to find it. Clemson, another ACC school with a national profile in football, has also been considered particularly unhappy, just not at FSU levels.

FSU’s unhappiness triggered one of the things it’s now citing as a reason to leave the ACC.

In September, the ACC voted to add three new teams, none of them in the league’s historic geographic footprint: Southern Methodist University in Dallas, California and Stanford in the San Francisco Bay area. Florida State was one of three ACC schools to vote against this expansion, and now cites that as a reason to leave: “The ACC’s hotly contested vote last September to add three new members, instead of increasing the value of its existing members’ media rights will further dilute these values and diminish the ACC’s already deemed inadequate ‘strength of schedule’ rating going forward,” Florida State’s lawsuit says. “This will necessarily handicap ACC members vying for a position in future [College Football Playoffs] against peers from the other Power Four conferences, including peers with inferior won-loss records. … In sum, the ACC has negotiated itself into a self-described ‘existential crisis,’ rendered itself fiscally unstable and substantially undermined its members’ capacity to compete at the elite level. In doing so, the ACC violated the contractual, fiduciary and legal duties it owed its members.”

Here’s what Florida State’s lawsuit doesn’t say: The Tallahassee school’s threat to leave the ACC is what led to that expansion. The ACC’s contract with ESPN (the one Florida State doesn’t like) requires the league to have at least 15 members. Three members — Florida State, Clemson and North Carolina — have been the ones most mentioned as likely to leave if they can find a legal way out. If any of them left, that would leave the ACC open to having its TV contract renegotiated — for the worse. By adding three teams, it bought an insurance policy so that even if Florida State, Clemson and North Carolina left, it would still have enough members for the TV deal. No, those new schools don’t make any geographic sense, but they were the three options available. If Florida State, in particular, hadn’t been so vocal about wanting to leave the ACC, the league may not have added those schools. In short, Florida State created the conditions for one of the things that it now complains about. 

Of note: The three schools most mentioned as potential leavers all voted against expansion. All the others voted for self-preservation, even at the risk of cross-country road trips. 

The ACC has called its rules “ironclad.” We’ll now find out.

The ACC is bound together by a legal “grant of rights,” meaning the member schools have turned over their TV rights to the league. The ACC has always said this is an “ironclad” clause, but Florida State is now testing that to find out. Is it? Dunno. This will be a payday for lawyers. Florida State has, quite naturally, filed its suit in Florida to get a home state advantage. The ACC has filed its own legal action in North Carolina. “Florida State is now in unprecedented territory,” ESPN reports. “No school has ever challenged a grant of rights in court.”

One curious detail that emerged in the legal action Friday: While the ACC holds the rights to its member schools through 2036, the ESPN deal actually runs through 2027. That’s new information. The network holds the right to extend the deal nine years, but Florida State points out that there’s no guarantee of any TV revenue past 2027, so why should it be bound to a deal where the potential value is unknown? The school also complains that the league’s exit rules have become increasingly restrictive over the years, to the point that they constitute an unlawful restraint on trade. The ACC’s response: Sorry, bub, you knew this when you signed away those rights. 

If Florida State exits the ACC, that could set off another round of realignment in college sports.

The last few years have seen a spectacular rearranging of league membership, culminating this year with the Pac-12 collapsing to just two teams as the others departed for the Big Ten and the Big 12.

Florida State would clearly like to join the Big Ten or the SEC (more on that later). If Florida State finds a way out of the ACC, other schools might follow. While Clemson and North Carolina have been the others most prominently mentioned, so has Virginia — and that’s where all this starts to hit home in Virginia, especially in Blacksburg. Let’s walk through how.

If any marquee schools leave, that diminishes the value of the ACC.

This is just basic economics. It’s tempting to tell Florida State “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” but, like I said at the beginning, this is all about money — and Florida State makes the ACC a more valuable TV package (just not as valuable as Florida State would like). Losing those schools potentially has economic repercussions in both Charlottesville and Blacksburg. Which game is likely to draw the most fans: Florida State or a hypothetical match-up with an equally hypothetical Hiram Hornblower State College? OK, their replacements may not be that bad, but you get the idea. This isn’t just about won-loss records, or even box office revenues. It’s about how many fans show up to spend money on a football weekend — even to the point of buying a second home.

A 2015 Virginia Tech study found that “as many as 4,700 properties in the region may be owned by out-of-region football fans, primarily season ticketholders. Realtors estimate about half of those properties, or 2,350 homes, were bought with the expressed intent to attend Virginia Tech football home games.” That report estimated the economic impact of Tech football at $61.9 million. In today’s dollars, that’s $80.8 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator.

If the ACC broke up, Virginia has more and better options than Virginia Tech. 

The break-up of a legendary conference once was the stuff of fiction, but then came the implosion of the Pac-12. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that if Florida State finds an easy way out of the ACC (or even a hard one), that the whole conference could fly apart. I addressed this in more length back in the summer, but Virginia has been widely mentioned as a possible addition to the Big Ten (or SEC, but mostly the Big Ten) if the school became available on the free market. Virginia Tech, though, may not be as attractive a school. The Big Ten likes schools that are members of the Association of American Universities, an invitation-only group of top research schools. Virginia is a member, Virginia Tech is not. That makes Tech an unlikely Big Ten invite.

Would the SEC be interested in Virginia Tech? Possibly, but keep in mind that this is all about money. If the SEC is adding schools, it’s going to care a lot more about which ones add value to its TV deal. The SEC would be a lot more interested in other schools that bring in a bigger audience — if it’s interested in them at all. If the ACC blew up, Virginia Tech could find itself in the uncomfortable position of begging for admission to the Big 12. That would not be a bad landing spot, but not as good as the ACC. Who’s likely to draw more fans to Cassell Coliseum for basketball in February, Duke or Central Florida? North Carolina or Houston? Case closed.

That’s why back in the summer Miyares pointedly warned that neither Virginia nor Virginia Tech should do anything in conference moves to hurt the other. Translation: Virginia shouldn’t think about leaving the ACC because Virginia Tech might wind up the loser in a game of conference musical chairs. I asked Miyares’ office for a comment on the Florida State lawsuit, but it’s a holiday weekend and I haven’t heard back. Given his earlier comments, and his well-known interest in college sports, I assume he’s following this closely — although he might be distracted this weekend when his alma mater (and mine), James Madison University, plays its first bowl game. Let’s remember that Miyares almost went to court to challenge NCAA rules to make sure JMU got a bowl invite. He sure seemed ready, but the school’s board of visitors seemed more reluctant. That makes me think if there’s a legal weapon Miyares sees here to protect the interests of the two Virginia schools in the ACC, he won’t hesitate to use it.

The irony: Florida State might not have better options.

From a purely athletic and geographic standpoint, Florida State fits naturally in the SEC, but it’s not a given that the SEC would want Florida State. The league already has the University of Florida, so is already in the Florida market. What would make more sense to the SEC from a business standpoint, strengthening its hold on Florida or adding an entirely new market, such as, say, North Carolina? (Or Virginia, for that matter.) Florida State has also been mentioned for the Big Ten, but Florida State is not an AAU member and every school the Big Ten has admitted so far has been an AAU member. (Nebraska is no longer an AAU member but was when it was admitted, and is said to want back in.) Would the lure of a Florida market outweigh the Big Ten’s professed interested in academics? If the Big Ten wanted both, it has another option: The ACC’s University of Miami, which was admitted to the AAU earlier this year. Florida State is suing because it says it wants to be able to test the market, but there’s no guarantee the market will provide the payoff the school wants. If Florida State were a pro team, it would have the option of moving to a different city that seemed more lucrative. College sports doesn’t work that way. If the SEC doesn’t want Florida State because it’s already got the Florida market and the Big Ten doesn’t want it because it’s not an AAU member, then Florida State is out of luck. Ultimately, we’ll find out here just how much money really does matter in college sports. 

The end game here could be the creation of super-conferences.

The names and numbers mean nothing anymore. The Big Ten is big but no longer at 10; it now has 14 members and is set to have 18. The Big 12 is at 14 and set to go to 16. The poor Pac-12 is now really the Pac-2. Only the Southeastern Conference is true to its name, assuming you count Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma as southeastern. All these conferences are getting bigger. It’s a case of “go big or go home” — or, more accurately, go the way of the Pac-12, or the late Southwest Conference, which no longer exists.

Even before the Florida State lawsuit, the ACC and Big 12 were exploring joint scheduling — and studying a possible merger. A Florida State exit (especially if followed by others), could accelerate that. What’s that mean for Tech fans? Instead of that Florida State game, you might be getting Iowa State instead. What’s that do for the price of the condo you bought for game day weekends?