Former ESPN president John Skipper explains roadblocks to Florida State leaving ACC

The ACC has largely been left out of the conference realignment discussion due to its grant of rights in a media deal that runs through 2036. It hasn’t seemed plausible for a team to leave. That is until Florida State decided to make it clear the school is unhappy with the ACC.

The discussion of leaving the ACC even came up during a Florida State Board of Trustees meeting. However, as former ESPN president John Skipper explained, it’s not that simple.

“They have multiple problems, right?” Skipper said on The Dan LeBatard Show with Stugotz. “First of all, I don’t know if they have another home. I don’t know if the Big Ten or the SEC wants them. The SEC has a Florida school. So, they don’t get paid more money in the SEC Network for bringing in Florida State. They have 16 teams. That’s a nice number to have in a conference. The ACC, I think it’s been reported, I don’t know this from my experience or any other way, that Florida [State] has about a $30 million penalty it would have to pay for four years to get out. It’s $120 million.”

Because the ACC’s media deal runs through 2036, other conferences are going to be able to negotiate their own media deals multiple times. That means they’ll make significantly more than the ACC. It’s a deal that made sense at the time for the ACC, giving the conference stability. However, today, it puts the conference at a disadvantage financially.

“Second, the rights to the Florida State games, at least in the deal, even if they bought their way out of the conference, remain in the deal until ’36. So, they could buy themselves out and still not receive revenues from anybody else.”

The grant of rights ties Florida State to the ACC. Even if they leave the conference, the ACC holds those rights through 2036.

“They would have to litigate to take their media rights with them because they have given those rights to the ACC through ’36.”

That litigation would, essentially, be a decision regarding how much Florida State is worth and making them payout to cover the value that they would cost a network by leaving for a new conference.

“To give the athletic director at Florida State his due, he’s simply trying to get somebody’s attention. Like, this is not acceptable. I can’t keep my program in the top 10 or 15 if I’m getting $30-40 million dollars a year less than the University of Florida, with whom I’m competing. He probably knows this is not practical. I’m not actually sure that the Big Ten or the SEC wants to expand further.”

Would unequal revenue sharing solve the problem with Florida State?

So, Florida State is in a conference that is quickly falling behind financially. Leaving would be incredibly expensive and potentially not even help financially in the near future, assuming any conference wants them. How does Florida State fix this?

“I think it’s difficult and, by the way, the suggested recourse that they get paid more money than the other schools, the last time that happened in a Power 5 conference, it was in the Big 12 where Texas got more money than anybody else and that didn’t work out very well,” Skipper said.

Skipper is referencing the idea of the ACC paying uneven media shares. So, schools like Florida State, Miami, and Clemson get more of the payout, while the Boston Colleges of the world get less. He made an interesting comparison to explain why this won’t work, though.

“That’s not gonna work. That’s actually what they do in England in the English Premier League. They pay more money to the big teams…look, the English Premier League is very happy. If they ran the NFL they would want the Cowboys and the Packers and the New York Giants to win every year. They don’t want the Tennessee Titans to win. They don’t want the Jacksonville Jaguars to win,” Skipper explained.

“And, their financial payments are actually set up so that doesn’t happen. Every now and again, Leicester won a few years ago and everybody thought that was fun. That’s not really what they want.”