To guard against the potential departure of schools like Florida State, the ACC proactively added two of the four remaining Pac-12 schools left behind after the Big Ten and Big 12 poached most of the conference over the summer.
Bay Area rivals Cal and Stanford will begin play in the ACC next fall, along with SMU from the AAC.
In its legal filing against the ACC on Friday, FSU claimed that it preferred another Pac-12 program left behind by the latest round of conference realignment: Oregon State.
In the filing, which aims to challenge the league’s grant of rights that locks Florida State and the rest of the league’s schools through 2036, the school argues that the Beavers have more “Tier I media football appeal,” and would have been a better target for the conference, per Matt Fortuna of The Inside Zone. The school’s legal filing comes weeks after it was controversially left out of the College Football Playoff despite an undefeated record and ACC championship, following the season-ending injury to star quarterback Jordan Travis.
“Although Stanford and Cal are excellent schools with well-deserved outstanding academic reputations, they are each lacking in the lone metric that matters in the athletic conference market today, namely, Tier I media football appeal,” the filing reads.
“Of the four remaining Pac-12 teams, Oregon State stood alone having finished this season ranked number 22 in the polls, while Cal was ranked number 56 and Stanford number 94 (out of a possible 133).”
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Florida State linked out to The Athletic‘s Dec. 4 ranking of all 133 FBS-level programs as its cited rankings. Oregon State actually finished higher in the official College Football Playoff rankings (No. 19) and the AP Top 25 (No. 21). The Beavers are No. 22 in the Coaches Poll.
“In demonstration that the ACC had missed the point of conference realignment, in making its ‘strategic’ conference realignment move, the ACC skipped over Oregon State in favor of Cal and Stanford, a recognition the ACC did not appreciate what had driven the Power Four Conference realignment in the first instance—Tier I media value in football.”
Despite Florida State’s argument, there has never been one determining factor when it comes to conference realignment. While most would likely argue football success as the top priority for league, the Big Ten famously added Rutgers and Maryland to boost its Northeastern footprint, with far more successful programs potentially available. Even in this most recent round, the conference added USC and UCLA before ultimately bringing in Oregon and Washington, which have had more recent football success than the Los Angeles schools by just about any metric.
Florida State’s board of trustees unanimously approved the lawsuit against the ACC on Friday, in order to challenge the grant of rights. It is currently estimated that it would cost the university more than $500 million to leave the ACC right now, as the conference would control the Seminoles’ media rights through 2036 based on the contract it signed in 2016.
FSU believes the contract violates antitrust law and is legally unenforceable.
After Florida State’s announcement, Andrew Carter of The News & Observer reported that the ACC filed its own lawsuit against the university on Thursday, in order to keep legal jurisdiction in the conference’s home state of North Carolina instead of Florida, where FSU’s suit was filed.
“Florida State’s decision to file action against the Conference is in direct conflict with their long standing obligations and is a clear violation of their legal commitments to the other members of the conference,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement Friday. “All ACC members, including Florida State, willingly and knowingly re-signed the current Grant of Rights in 2016, which is wholly enforceable and binding through 2036.”
