(08-17-2021 09:41 AM)Claw Wrote: (08-17-2021 09:35 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (08-17-2021 09:26 AM)Claw Wrote: Is it possible for the ACC to simply dissolve their grant of rights agreement? I would think they could vote to do so. Is it a majority vote? Unanimous?
Assuming they could, is there a way ESPN could package together something that would entice them to do so? Could ESPN throw enough money at them to get Clemson and Florida State free? Could they throw anything else?
The GOR seems solid unless it is dissolved. Could it be? And how?
As with any agreement, the only way to amend or terminate a GOR is for unanimous approval by all parties. There is no "vote" to void a contract - if a single party holds out, the agreement continues.
Even if the GOR were terminated, why on Earth would Wake Forest and others ever agree to anything that would allow Florida State and Clemson to leave more easily? There is NEVER enough money that ESPN could throw at them. Just look at the Big 12 - it doesn't matter how much temporary money they receive if it means a permanent relegation to non-power status. A few million dollars now is honestly meaningless if it means that your institution is a non-power school in 5 years.
As I've said on other threads, the GOR agreement is honestly a VERY simple legal document. It has also been used in many other venues for many years (particularly in the entertainment industry), so this isn't some type of untested contract mechanism (which some fans seem to mistakenly believe).
We should have a new rule in conference realignment: any move that requires terminating a GOR agreement isn't happening. (Note that UT and OU aren't breaking the GOR - every legal step that they've taken, such as announcing that they're not leaving until 2025, is an acknowledgment of the continued enforcement of that GOR agreement until its contract termination date.)
You answered the dissolution part of my question.
At some point the impending end of the GOR changes the game. We may not see it with Texas/OK, but the opening is always there for ESPN or anyone to manipulate the post-GOR offers to get what they want quicker.
Sure - it's practically easier for a school to move near the end of a GOR agreement than it is when there's a decade-plus left (as is the case with the ACC).
However, there's just a practical consideration that I think a lot of people are missing when you take a 1000-foot view: adding Texas IS the end game for power conference realignment. That was true back in 2010 when most of us here started paying attention to conference realignment and that's the case now. There is no single addition to any conference - not Florida State, not Clemson, not even Notre Dame - that is more valuable than adding Texas.
The fact that the SEC got to add them AND another elite brand in Oklahoma in one swift move (without even having to take in schools like Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, as the Pac-16 proposal contemplated) is simply checkmate. Plus, Texas is actually getting *back* two of its biggest historical rivals of Texas A&M and Arkansas. The SEC expansion is obviously a huge money move, but people are forgetting how much sense this makes for the SEC/UT/OU even *without* the money, which is exactly what you want for a 20/50/100-year expansion move.
There's simply no answer to it by the other P5 conferences. Any other conceivable move of power brands (e.g. Ohio State, USC, etc.) would require complete shotgun marriages. The SEC will be at the point where even adding FSU and Clemson would *lose* them money. FSU and Clemson simply aren't cultural fits for the Big Ten and, even if you put that aside, it would take a de facto merger between the Big Ten and ACC to add enough schools to make it into something other than a shotgun marriage. (It would be the same with the thought of USC going to the Big Ten - they basically need the entire rest of the Pac-12 to come with them because they'd be giving up so much.)
The only other real earthquake that could occur is if Notre Dame announced that it was dropping independence. That's about it. Otherwise, I truly think that we're done with expansion at the power conference level - all of the valuable semi-realistic conference realignment moves for the P5 pretty much involved Texas and/or Oklahoma... and the SEC just took them both without having to add *any* filler.
Now, the Big 12 will ultimately need to backfill, which means that the AAC is very likely losing at least Cincinnati (and likely more than that), so the entire G5 will probably get upended. This looks more like the conference realignment round of 2003 (when the ACC added Miami/VT/BC) where the real changes were at the lower levels of the conferences as opposed to the other top power conferences. That's in stark contrast to the conference realignment round of 2010-2013 where everyone seemed to be moving everywhere.