What to make of Clemson's lawsuit against the ACC

Clemson University made waves on Tuesday as the school filed suit against the Atlantic Coast Conference to seek clarity around — and an exit strategy from — the conference’s Grant of Rights. The ACC has maintained the league owns the athletics media broadcast rights for member schools for the duration of the Grant of Rights, which runs potentially through 2036.

And the Tigers are joining with conference rivals to the south in Florida State in suing the ACC over the Grant of Rights. It’s a thorny thicket of issues, which On3’s Andy Staples and Pete Nakos dove into.

“Clemson is saying we need some clarity on this Grant of Rights, on these withdrawal penalties,” Staples said. “And basically Pete, there’s a lot of ‘What if Clemson wasn’t a member of the ACC? Would the Grant of Rights still hold?'”

Much of the lawsuit filed by Clemson in Pickens County, South Carolina, court — the ACC is now involved in lawsuits in venues across three states — tries to separate the questions of what it means to be an ACC member and who holds media rights to broadcast a school’s various athletic events. The ACC will likely contend that a bulk of conference membership obligations from the schools is signing over media rights.

But by attempting to parse out the matter into separate parts — an argument that may or may not work to convince the necessary minds in open court — Clemson lays out notions in the suit that Staples alluded to: if Clemson wasn’t in the ACC, the ACC surely wouldn’t own Clemson’s media rights.

What it all boils down to is that the Tigers aren’t content standing pat in a league that’s quickly being left behind as the middle class of college sports as the Big Ten and SEC establish hegemony.

“So Clemson is definitely willing to and happy to explore new conference membership,” Nakos said. “This is something that Clemson has been working on for months. You and I have both heard this.”

Agreements between the ACC and ESPN were included as exhibits with the suit, but heavily redacted. Though Florida State had not been so careful when attaching certain documents as exhibits, and Staples noted there’s an option for ESPN to pick up the league media rights from 2027 through 2036. It’s an option the broadcasting giant would likely exercise, keeping relatively low cost college sports inventory on hand.

That window of time could be indicative of the current push for legal action, though. Changing paradigms beyond the ACC have only accelerated matters, too.

And as Clemson has now joined Florida State in the legal fray, questions about who else might be itching to leave the ACC come into focus — and attention turns to Coral Gables and Chapel Hill.

“We know there are two others who want out and could potentially do the same thing, North Carolina and Miami,” Staples said. “Now, North Carolina’s been pretty diplomatic about all this. Bubba Cunningham just last week was interviewed — he’s the athletic director at North Carolina — was saying, ‘Hey, we can protect ourselves and look ahead but we also don’t have to be as aggressive.’ But I do wonder, now that Clemson has joined the fray, because before it started to feel like everybody was looking at Florida State going ‘Yeah but I don’t know. You guys are a little aggressive for our taste. Maybe we do this a little bit differently.’ But now that Clemson’s joined the fray, I feel like this could open the floodgates.”