Ah, who will ever forget those carefree days of yesteryear when the ACC would hold its annual Spring Meetings in a plush resort on Florida’s First Coast and all of the league’s member presidents, athletic directors and football coaches would get together as one big happy family and talk about such topics as future scheduling, branding and rule changes.
And then, after a couple hours of meetings, they would convene at either the beach, the golf course or the spa and get down to the real order of business — aka drinking pina coladas, sinking a 25-foot birdie putt on the picturesque par-5 that hugs the coastline or getting a 90-minute hot stone massage.
Those were the good ol’ days.
12 conference realignment lawsuit lessons for FSU, ACC and Clemson
Even though, I haven’t seen the ACC’s itinerary for its Spring Meetings currently under way at the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island, it doesn’t take genius to figure out that commissioner Jim Phillips and other conference officials are no doubt forgoing their Shiatsu massages and banana daiquiris to take care of what should be the one and only order of business on their agenda:
Saving our freaking league from implosion!
It’s no secret that the ACC is on the verge of disintegrating just like the Pac-12 last year. Unless league officials do something drastic to keep the big boys — Florida State, Clemson and North Carolina — from bailing out and turning the ACC into the AAC, the conference is doomed. By my estimation, the only solution to saving the league, short of hoping and praying that the ACC’s besieged grant of rights agreement holds up amid multiple legal assaults, is for the subordinate conference members to make some serious financial sacrifices.
More on that in a minute, but let us first review the ACC’s dire situation. It starts with the league being sued in the state of Florida by FSU, in the state of South Carolina by Clemson and getting hammered in both states by grandstanding politicians such as Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody.
It’s been widely acknowledged that FSU and Clemson want out of the ACC so they can hook up with either the SEC or Big Ten, where they can make an estimated $30 million-$40 million per year more in TV money.
Even worse is that it appears the ACC’s most storied and staunchest charter member — the University of North Carolina — now wants out, too. UNC’s Board of Trustees held a meeting earlier this week in which members spoke out about the athletic department’s massive budget deficit and scathingly questioned the school’s seemingly pro-ACC athletic director Bubba Cunningham.
One UNC trustee, Dave Boliek, said at the meeting that he is pushing for the Tar Heels to leave the ACC for either the SEC or Big Ten.
“I am advocating for that,” Boliek said. “That’s what we need to do. We need to do everything we can to get there. Or the alternative is the ACC is going to have to reconstruct itself.”
Reconstruct itself?
What exactly does that mean?
Here’s what I think it means:
It means that many of the ACC’s lesser football brands — see Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Boston College, Syracuse, Pitt, Duke, Virginia and N.C. State — are going to have to swallow their pride and take less money so that FSU, Clemson, UNC and perhaps Miami and Louisville can make more.
The 14 existing ACC schools now each get an equal share (about $40 million annually per school) from the conference’s revenue sharing. Well, guess what? FSU, Clemson and UNC want out of the ACC so they can join the SEC or Big Ten and make closer to $70 million or $80 million.
This is why the ACC must come up with a new revenue model in which marquee brands FSU, Clemson, UNC, Miami and Louisville get a raise to $70 million while many non-marquee brands agree to take a pay cut from $40 million to about $25 million.
Bianchi, you moron, why would Wake Forest, Boston College, etc. vote to take $25 million when they can continue to make $40 million under the current revenue model?
Because $25 million per year is a whole lot better than $0 per year, which is how much they’ll make if the Big Three of FSU, Clemson and UNC extricate themselves from the ACC and essentially leave the remaining members as a bunch of hopeless wanderers.
Without the Big Three, the league’s existing TV deal with ESPN would essentially be null and void and the hopeless wanderers would either have to scramble to find another conference affiliation or remain in a watered-down version of the ACC. In either scenario, the hopeless wanderers will make a lot less than my proposed $25 million a year.
Don’t get me wrong, I think FSU and Clemson are reneging on an ACC grant of rights contract they voluntarily signed (twice). And, yes, maybe the ACC will win their multiple legal battles and the league will be miraculously preserved.
But if I’m Wake Forest and Boston College, I would not bet my entire athletic future on the ACC’s ability to uphold its embattled grant of rights agreement. Especially if respected and revered UNC files a lawsuit against the ACC in the league’s home state of North Carolina.
Besides, many of the bottom feeders in the major conferences have been getting a free ride for decades. As former UCF coach George O’Leary once famously said, “There are two or three good teams in each major conference. The rest are just members who are cashing checks.”
Memo to the ACC’s bottom feeders: It’s much better to keep cashing checks — even if they’re smaller ones — than to be left begging for crumbs.
The time for pride and entitlement has passed. Now is the time for sacrifice and survival.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on X (formerly Twitter) @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen