(06-21-2022 02:46 PM)Lurker Above Wrote:  

(06-20-2022 10:52 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(06-20-2022 09:05 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(06-20-2022 08:53 PM)Lurker Above Wrote:  

(06-20-2022 11:19 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Absolutely correct.

I'm not an insider and I've made a lot of predictions over the years - some have been right and some have been wrong.

However, I have a firm understanding of contract law. That bolded statement is a total misunderstanding of how a Grant of Rights agreement works. It is irrelevant that ESPN holds the rights to both the SEC and ACC at the same time. Each ACC school granted its rights to the *conference* - NOT ESPN. It's the ACC that has to release any schools from grant of rights agreements and they have an absolute, unequivocal 100% power to use any basis (whether reasonable or unreasonable or no matter how much money is offered) to refuse that release. The fact that the released schools would be under a different SEC contract with ESPN instead of FOX is totally irrelevant to the ACC.

Here's the thing: the fact that schools and conferences "talk" doesn't matter. Lots of schools and conferences talk all of the time. If you were to tell me that UNC has talked with the SEC and/or Big Ten, I wouldn't doubt that has occurred.

However, as a lawyer, absolutely no one has shown me why (a) the ACC would ever release any school from its Grant of Rights agreement when it still has over a dozen years to run and (b) even if the ACC were willing to do so, how any defecting school would be willing to pay the high nine figure amounts that would realistically need to be offered to the ACC to obtain that release. Sure, every school would love to earn $30 million or $40 million more per year in TV rights. It's a different equation if a school has to pay $200-$300 million or more upfront to obtain a GOR release to get that additional TV money, which would effectively eat up such additional TV money.

Here's a not-so-crazy thought that cuts through all of the conspiracy theories about ESPN and other parties in college football: the ACC schools might simply be screwed until the mid-2030s no matter how much they want to leave. They have onerous GOR obligations that will effectively prevent them from realizing the additional revenue that they'd receive from the SEC and Big Ten in the first place, so they have no viable options. Notre Dame is a lone wolf that believes independence is part of their institutional identity, so they're not helping the ACC, either. The ACC schools can complain or talk all that they want, but it doesn't matter. They're stuck.

I never said the ACC schools would not have to negotiate with the ACC to leave. I also said it would be unlikely that they could leave because of the GORs. What I said is that ESPN would have a say. That is only where you and I disagree. I think it's absurd to think ESPN did not put into their ACC contract that if somehow schools left the conference before the contract was up that it would still be ESPN broadcasting their home games. ESPN has known for quite awhile that conferences break-up and no one can predict the future. The contract would address that no matter how remote the possibility was deemed.

1. Should Pay for Play pass there is precedent that a court mandated change which produces inequity in a contract can void both GORs and Contracts which did not account for the inequity. Particularly the ACC contract which can't anticipate this change could be voided should it occur. The inequity is obvious. It's the increased overhead mandated by court ruling when no such overhead is sustained by the rights holder.

2. Contracts signed were for NCAA amateur football. It will become a form of professional football.

3. I suspect the SEC's new contract took this potential change into consideration. The B1G contract would be foolish not to do so. The PAC and Big 12 contracts might come after the ruling. All of them are likely to have anticipated this possibility. Not the ACC which will have no current redress.

Therefore, I believe the ACC still could have options. We'll see.

Under point #1, what I believe that you’re referring to is an agreement that becomes *unenforceable* because of a court-mandated or legal change. That won’t happen here. It wouldn’t matter if what we now know as college football becomes a full-on pay for play sport with NFL-style salary caps and labor unions.

Same thing for point #2 and #3. If the ACC GOR agreement has substantively the same terms as the Big Ten GOR agreement (which has been made public), it completely doesn’t matter whether players are paid or not any more than the fact that the coaches are paid. If the school is fielding a football team, then those rights are owned by the conference without any stipulation or exception.

I know that we’re all realignment addicts here that want the action badly, but there is absolutely no legal basis for any of these arguments. Zero. None. Nada. Can’t be any clearer. There is NO *unilateral* out from that contract for any school. Any “out” from that contract would require a mutual agreement that school and the ACC to release the obligations.

Disney knows this better than anyone since they’re stuck with the perpetual grant of rights license deal that Marvel signed with Sony for Spider-Man movies before Disney purchased Marvel. Believe me that every lawyer in Hollywood has looked for a way for Disney to get out of that deal and it simply doesn’t exist. That’s why I’ve stated before that sports fans are super naive about the power of these contracts and mistakenly think that they’re untested and rare agreements when, in fact, they’re very well-established.

The only way that any schools leave the ACC for the next dozen years is if the ACC agrees to release those schools, but that’s almost certainly only gonna to happen if the ACC demands so much money from those schools that it defeats the whole purpose of those schools wanting to leave (which is to make more money). That’s essentially how Sony has treated Disney with respect to the Spider-Man deal and that’s how the ACC would treat any attempted raid by the Big Ten or ACC.

So Frank, what your saying is no school leaves the ACC unless all schools agree to leave the ACC to go to greener pastures because no one can be left behind because they would get all of the GORs money. Or maybe just enough to dissolve the conference if such termination provisions provide terms favorable to the schools voting to leave the conference so they would not have to pay too much to the schools voting to preserve the ACC.

So there would be a lot of mouths to feed for the ACC to break up. Of course we kind of knew that, right? Probably not enough soup to go around, unless there was a break away, maybe.

An interesting thought is would the necessity of bringing the ACC members into the new future, whatever that is, because of the GORs be a valid excuse to leave others behind as to antitrust laws, if any apply?

Well, Bilas did suggest that the ACC just merge with the SEC.
It interesting to note that Bilas works for ESPN.