Paul Finebaum reveals where the ACC needs to put its foot down at upcoming spring meetings

The annual ACC Spring Meetings are underway in Amelia Island, Florida, kicking off on Monday and ending on Wednesday. One of the largest looming topics of this year’s meetings will be revenue distribution, as schools like Clemson, Florida State, and Miami are expected to push for revenue distribution models that will put more money in their pockets and less in other members of the conference.

ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum spoke with Greg McElroy and Cole Cubelic ‘McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning’ on Monday to discuss the ACC meetings. And Finebaum gave his take on their revenue situation from the perspective of the conference’s less funded teams.

“I would put my foot down,” Finebaum said. “Because college sports, especially college football, can be cyclical and there was a long period when Florida State was a non-entity. And I think you made the point perfectly, you took to the Big 12, you especially look at the University of Texas, which we all know went out and did their own deal. Credit to them, but it helped expedite at least three, maybe four, schools from the Big 12.”

There’s no question that any given conference’s top teams and markets can inherently generate the most revenue, resulting and more revenue for the conference. But overpaying those programs creates a sizable gap between the haves and have-nots of a conference, tarnishing the level of competitive balance within.

This will be a challenging balance for ACC to adhere to, especially when factoring in other sports like basketball and the conference’s current media rights concerns, but a balance that Finebaum believes the ACC should do its best to maintain.

“It’s not worth it, it’s not the way college football is designed. You don’t see this in the NFL and even though some entities are worth more, I mean obviously lets talk about what has Alabama meant to the SEC from a football standpoint versus some at the bottom. You’ve never heard that conversation here and I think it’s a terribly bad sign for the ACC when members start talking like this,” Finebaum said.

ACC commissioner James Phillips has a tall task ahead of him as he enters his third iteration of spring meetings. Along with managing the revenue distribution within his own conference, finding ways for the ACC to close the revenue gap between themselves and the SEC and Big 10 conferences will likely be a significant subject as well this week.