Florida State AD Michael Alford, Board of Trustees discuss ACC media rights, potential buyout options

At a Florida State University Board of Trustees meeting on Friday, Seminoless athletic director Michael Alford was posed an interesting question, according to Matt Baker of the Tampa Bay Times. The question: How much money would it cost Florida State to leave the ACC?

The answer, provided by the university’s legal counsel, is that it would cost Florida State somewhere in the neighborhood of $120 million to bail from the ACC and the league’s current media-rights deal. The backdrop for the question was a discussion about the ACC’s current model of equal revenue distribution.

As it currently stands, Alford said, Florida State creates about 15% of the revenue for the conference but only gets a return of 7%. This has led to a resource gap.

“At the end of the day, if something’s not done, we cannot be $30 million behind every year compared to our peers,” Alford said.

Baker reported that a trustee asked roughly the following question: “So if we make up the $30 million we’re behind from our peers … we’d break even in roughly four years?”

Alford responded that hypothetically, yes, that would be the the case. That means that if Florida State were to pay $120 million (or so) to get to a league that would offer significantly more under its media-rights deal, it would take at least four years to make up what was spent.

Before any of this back and forth about leaving the ACC and the associated costs and benefits, Alford drew a bottom line about Florida State needing to increase revenues. “At the end of the day for Florida State to compete nationally, something has to change going forward,” Alford said.

That might be ACC revenue distribution, but at least one trustee is thinking about a bigger change than that.