Florida State University called a pre-Christmas meeting with the Board of Trustees, but it’s not so jolly

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Exclusively on Peacock. Florida State. Their board of trustees had a meeting this morning.

They met for just over an hour, roughly. They had their legal representation there, the athletic director, Michael Alford was there as well. The chair of the board, Peter Collins, headed things up and they voted unanimously.

Alright? We're challenging the ACC's grant of rights. We're challenging the media deal that the ACC has and the penalties and the cost that it takes for a school to leave the ACC.

Because right now, based off of grant of rights, money that... So, the grant of rights, all the member schools of the ACC, including the ones coming in, Stanford, Cal, SMU, their grant of rights is owned by the Atlantic Coast Conference. Grant of rights meaning that their media deal.

So, there's stuff that's dispersed on television. So when we see North Carolina and NC State and Duke and Wake Forest, when they're playing their games, and they're on ACC Network or they're on ESPN2 or something along the line, ESPN ABC. The ACC owns those media rights and they sold them to ESPN.

slash Disney. The ACC controls the rights and the money that is earned off of those deals through 2036 for every single member school. So, Florida State is challenging that, saying, you know what? The penalty to leave the conference, which is roughly $120 million, is the exit fee you have to pay just to leave. On top of that, the money that's distributed every single year to conferences, or by the conference to its member schools, you gotta pay that money basically up front if you wanted to. To possibly buy your way out because the grant of rights and all that stuff. So, Florida State, according to the legal department today in the Board of Trustees meeting, said it would cost $572 million.

Let me say that again. $572 million. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of cash. That's a lot of cash.

That's a lot of money. So, earlier today in that Board of Trustees meeting, Peter Collins, who's the chair of the Board of Trustees for Florida State, talked about, hey, the reason why, again, they're challenging the ACC. Here's Peter Collins, the Board of Trustees chair, discussing challenging the ACC. Today, we've reached a crossroad in our relationship with the ACC. We are faced with the fact that the ACC is locked into a deteriorating media rights contract at revenues far below other conferences.

The ACC leadership is also not interested in further negotiations on unequal revenue sharing or larger success initiatives. More recently, the ACC voted over Florida State's objection to add three new teams that add no additional pro rata media value to the conference. In fact, these additions will more than likely reduce the per team payouts from the conference after the next contract is executed. OK, well, I'm not sure about the in terms of that revenue distribution, because ESPN is actually kicking in more money. In order for Stanford and Cal and SMU to come in, SMU is not even taking any media money for, I think, seven years.

So you don't have to worry about that. And also, Cal and Stanford for the first several years aren't even taking a full share either. Also, well, the ACC made this decision, you know, above Florida State's head. No, all the schools in the ACC voted on adding Cal, Stanford and SMU. Yeah, you voted against it. You're in the minority on this one. You had to have was a 12 of 15 because there's 15 member schools right now.

You need a 12 of 15. You're one of the three that didn't. So you got outvoted. This wasn't like, oh, Jim Phillips is like, I'm doing it anyway. I don't care what the rest of you ACC schools think.

I'm doing it anyway. That wasn't the case. The ACC schools voted on it.

So get that fact straight first. You want to talk about, OK, the deteriorating value, the deteriorating value, I could say it, of the ACC's media deal. OK, I understand that you want to get into that because the ACC at the time signed like a kind of a precedent-setting deal in terms of their media rights with the with ESPN. And that's how we eventually got the ACC network and all these games across ESPN, ESPNU, ESPN2, whatever it might be. They set that deal long before the SEC had their deal with ESPN, long before the Big Ten had their deals now with Fox and CBS and NBC moving forward.

So the ACC kind of set that precedent. So for them, they were kind of like the ground breakers, like, hey, you know what, we're guaranteed, guaranteed this level of money for the next 20 years. There was financial security in that, knowing that, hey, over this lifetime of this deal, this 20 plus year contract, essentially you're signing, there is security going forward, a constant source of revenue coming in. Well, then live television rights and stuff, things like that changed. Obviously streaming has been introduced and just how people consume media has all evolved, something that no one really could have predicted back in 2012 or 2010. Again, the changing landscape. Now, if you want to go back with ESPN and, you know, renegotiate your deal and in good faith and things along those lines, sure, go for it.

You're allowed to try and do that. There's always a new reason to play cash prices every day of the week. P-U-L-S-Z.com. Pulsing your market, you can play anywhere. P-U-L-S-Z.com. Okay. Round two. Name something that's not boring. Laundry. Oh, a book club. Computer solitaire. Huh? Ah, sorry. We were looking for Chumba Casino. That's right. ChumbaCasino.com has over a hundred casino style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes.

ChumbaCasino.com. That's where we are. So the Board of Trustees made this decision. What does the Athletic Director think? Here's Michael Alford, the Athletic Director of Florida State, saying, hey, Board of Trustees, wherever you decide, I got your back. You know, the future of college athletics is really at a crossroads. I think Chairman and I talk about that a lot.

President and I talk about that a lot. Whether it's no media contracts that present financial challenges or proposed recent changes by the NCAA that's going to impact everyone in this industry's operation budgets moving forward. Here at Florida State, we have to evaluate all of our options and make decisions here that are going to have a 10, 20 year impact on us. And some of those we don't even see or feel in the immediate effects of it. But as I as I sit here, you know, this isn't a relationship decision or an issue at all.

It is a simple math problem, a very clear math problem. And it's an extremely difficult institutional decision for us to completely support the board's vote. All right. So he's all in on it, which makes perfect sense, because I guarantee you, if the AD say, hey, guys, let's not do this, Board of Trustees probably wouldn't be doing it. Let's be real. By the way, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, as well as Jim Ryan, the chair of the ACC Board of Directors, released a statement earlier today on Florida State's Board of Trustees meeting and their decision, saying, quote, Florida State's decision to file action against the conference is in direct conflict with their longstanding obligations and is a clear violation of their legal commitments to the other members of the conference. All ACC members, including Florida State, willingly and knowingly re-signed the current grant of rights in 2016, which is wholly enforceable and binding through 2036. Each university has benefited from this agreement, receiving millions of dollars in revenue, and neither Florida State nor any other institution has ever challenged its legitimacy. As a league, we are proud of the successes of our student athletes and that of the ACC. Going on a little bit further. So it's especially disappointing that FSU would choose to pursue this unprecedented and overreaching approach, further saying, quote, We are confident that the grant of rights, which has been honored by all other universities who signed similar agreements, will be affirmed by the courts and the conference's legal counsel will vigorously enforce the agreement in the best interests of the ACC's current and incoming members, end quote. So, yeah, they're mad.

And they basically they they had that statement prepared because that statement was released very soon after that Board of Trustees meeting ended, because the Board of Trustees meeting was called earlier this week and officially happened this morning. So I will I will say this. We're going to get into some other stuff here.

I want to get into the Carolina Hurricanes and the and the Carolina Panthers coming up here in just a minute. But I will say this. This is going to get ugly. This is going to get messy. There's going to be a lot of mud slinging.

There's going to be a lot of stuff thrown out. By both sides. This is going to get ugly. Even if Florida State stays with the ACC.

Still not going to be pretty. They're still not going to be happy unless they get a check that's the equivalent to what their rival Florida gets from the SEC. They're not going to be happy.

And heck, they probably still wouldn't be happy. But whatever decision comes out of this is going to set the precedent for the future going forward in college sports. Regarding media rights, media deals, media contracts, and how easily one school can leave the next or one school can leave a conference and go to another if they're invited.

Simple as that. This is going to be the precedent center. And it's who knows how long this will take. But it's going to get ugly. It already is ugly. It's going to get uglier. It's going to get uglier.