FSU, Clemson, ACC lawsuits may indeed settle – just not as expected, or as schools really wanted

The popular assumption since last December, when the ACC and Florida State sued each other one day apart, has always been that eventually they’d settle. Same with the legal fight between the ACC and Clemson, which began in March and, like the FSU case, centers on the conference’s Grant of Rights agreement.

The conference has been fighting in court to uphold that agreement, which member schools signed off on (twice). FSU and Clemson, meanwhile, have been trying to find a way out of it, with FSU’s attorneys recently being so bold as to ask a Tallahassee judge to essentially just go ahead and rule in its favor, basically arguing:

No need for some long, drawn-out courtroom dilly-dallying, Your Honor; simply grant us everything we desire and we’ll be on our way, thank you very much. (And oh, if you want to serve as the notary public when we sign our Big Ten papers, that’d be great, too.)

FSU’s courtroom prayer has little chance of its desired answer but, nonetheless, it stirred another round of social media chatter late last week and once again added to the so-called narrative that, somehow and some way, the school is going to find a way out of the ACC before the Grant of Rights’ 2036 expiration date. That Clemson will, too. That these cases are bound for a settlement, and likely one favorable to the schools.

And now it looks like this entire mess might indeed end in settlement. Just not the way anybody expected.

Settlement talks

Tuesday night, both Yahoo! Sports and ESPN.com reported that FSU and Clemson and the ACC are in the early stages — emphasis on early — of talks that would allow the schools to remain in the league and bring an end to their lawsuits. The rough details, Yahoo! and ESPN reported: Clemson and FSU would be in line to receive a larger share of the ACC’s television money. And the 2036 expiration date of the Grant of Rights would be moved up.

On the surface, this looks and sounds a lot like the ACC’s already-implemented “success initiative” — only expanded to include a provision that would allow FSU and Clemson to receive a larger cut of league television revenue, based on ratings. The logic here is clear enough: Football now accounts for about 80% of the ACC’s broadcast rights deal with ESPN. Florida State and Clemson, meanwhile, consistently deliver the strongest football TV ratings in the conference.

The schools have argued, then, that they deserve more of a share of that revenue — which would help them mitigate the yawning financial disparity between the ACC and the Big Ten and SEC, which have become the two wealthiest conferences in college athletics. Unlike the “success initiative,” though, which rewards schools for winning, a ratings-based divvying-up of the television money pot becomes murky, and quickly.

After all, how many people watch a given game is determined by all kinds of things: time, network, opponent, how a team’s season is going. And some of a given school’s ratings success, to be sure, is somewhat attributable to a kind of circular logic. More people watch FSU and Clemson football, yes — but those schools also almost always get the most desirable time slots and networks. Would it be possible, then, for another school’s brand value to rise, if given the same showcasing?

And what of basketball in all of this? How much does Duke’s brand matter there? Or UNC’s?

And what of the postseason? The most-watched game among ACC schools this year has been N.C. State’s victory against Duke in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. A lot of good that did the ACC, given CBS owns those broadcast rights, but still: it underscored that FSU and Clemson football are hardly the only schools or teams that draw viewership in the ACC.

More for all, not just some

It’s that kind of nitty-gritty that ACC school presidents and chancellors are likely to discuss when they consider whether to give FSU and Clemson what they want, which, in this case, is more TV money. And those school leaders should indeed be careful when they’re evaluating that question . Ask members of the Big 12 (those now fewer in number who were actually around for it) how things went in that conference when it catered forever to the whims of Texas and Oklahoma (but especially Texas).

Most likely, ACC leadership would consider a proposal that would allow all schools to make more money off strong ratings — and not just FSU and Clemson. That would follow the same sort of thinking as the success initiative, which set aside a pool of money that every member can benefit from, so long as they perform on the field or court.

The second part of this, according to those early reports, is about moving up the expiration date of the Grant of Rights. The early speculation is that FSU and Clemson have asked for it to end in 2030 — six years earlier than originally agreed upon. That lines up with what’s likely to be the next round of major television rights negotiations in college athletics and, to be sure, it’d be a major victory for FSU and Clemson if they convince the ACC to agree to such a thing.

But why would the conference agree to such a thing?

Providing FSU and Clemson with a financial incentive to stay is one thing. Hastening what would be their eventual (and perhaps inevitable) exit is another. These schools and their fans might disagree, but the reality is that not a single thing has happened over the past nine months (or six, in Clemson’s case) that suggests FSU or Clemson has any sort of leverage in these league disputes.

The schools have won nothing in court of much consequence. The legal cases have gone pretty much nowhere. The arguments in both are still about venue and jurisdiction. Even if a Tallahassee judge granted FSU everything it asked for last week, there’d still be several rounds of appeals — and the matter of an entirely separate case in North Carolina, about the exact same issues, that could result in a conflicting result.

All of which is to say that perhaps heading to court is proving more cumbersome and time-consuming than either Florida State or Clemson anticipated. In a best case scenario, both of these disputes seem three or four years away from an end date. And there’s a decent chance that neither FSU nor Clemson finds the escape they’re hoping to find.

And so it makes sense that both would be willing, or even desperately wanting, to head to the negotiating table. It makes sense, too, for the ACC, which has taken a public relations beating (even more than usual) amid the reality that two of its most valuable brands are trying to sue their way out of the league.

But here’s another reality:

These legal cases are going nowhere fast. Everyone is spending a lot of money — money, in the schools’ cases, they claim not to have enough of. It behooves everyone to work together to find a way forward. Some kind of settlement may indeed be possible, after all. Just not the one FSU and Clemson really wanted.