(12-03-2023 03:17 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (12-03-2023 02:16 PM)johnbragg Wrote: (12-03-2023 02:13 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (12-03-2023 01:42 PM)johnbragg Wrote: (12-03-2023 12:47 PM)quo vadis Wrote: They do now. No respect.
I don't really don't think this will have any impact, at all.
FSU was already as motivated as they could be to get out.
This can't happen again, the 4 team playoff is over. If the ACC and the Alliance hadn't blocked the playoff, FSU would be hosting a playoff game this year. And going forward, there aren't going to be 5 P5 champs fighting for 4 spots. 99% of the time the ACC champ is hosting a quarterfinal.
The Grant of Rights either holds up in court, or it doesn't.
Do you think the judge is going to be impressed by the fact that FSU got screwed out of a playoff spot? "Well, Little Richard and hundreds of musicisans just had to kick rocks when they got screwed on GOR contracts, but the Seminoles missed a CFP, that changes everything!"
Agreed. The GOR has nothing to do with whether the CFP was fair or not, whether the commissioner got on TV to advocate hard enough or not, or anything other than the terms of the GOR and the amount that it would take to buy it out. Once again for the gazillionth time to posters that need to post about the “ironclad” GOR in every single thread about the ACC, it’s not about “ironclad” terms, but whether anyone that desires to leave the ACC is willing to risk several hundred million dollars in buyout amounts to do so and, if so, who is actually going to pay that amount (and no matter what people want to say, negotiating legitimately *hundreds* of millions of dollars of liabilities isn’t the same as anything that we have seen in realignment up to this point).
It's not fair to say that "whether the GOR is ironclad" isn't a legitimate debate topic. We have learned by experience that exit fees can't be relied on to hold up in court. Exit fees are not ironclad.
"Is the GOR ironclad" means, if Florida State announced tomorrow that they were withdrawing from the ACC, and put together a schedule, would ESPN still own the rights to televise their TV games.
It is very much about ironclad vs non-ironclad contract clauses.
It’s not ESPN owning the rights.
It’s about who gets paid by ESPN for such rights - the ACC or SEC.
At the same time, I’m not voicing that whether the GOR is ironclad isn’t a legitimate topic. It’s of course a legitimate topic… but the amount of conjecture here people that have no background in the law is pretty astounding. Some of the highest paid lawyers in the country have been looking at that GOR document for months (or even years) and really have little clue of how a court rule. That is what *I* have said for years (and where my own analysis was cited in a Harvard journal on this topic): I have repeatedly stated that we really have no idea if the GOR is enforceable in court. Instead, it’s a question of whether a school could ever reasonably afford to challenge it when losing could legitimately mean a school like FSU could lose 40-50% of its entire endowment.
My main objection in most of these discussions is actually all financial (as opposed to legal): too many people are VASTLY underestimating the amount potential damages for a challenger to the GOR or just want to wish them away. I don’t care how much ESPN supposedly loves the SEC: they’re not stepping in to cover several hundred million dollars in damages for a school like FSU simply to shift them from one TV package that they own for the next 13 years to another TV package that they also already own. The ACC schools reasonably aren’t walking away from that level of money, either. This isn’t a realistic “the parties will meet in the middle because that’s what reasonable minds do” situation.
So, that has always been my ask for anyone that wants a school to lace the ACC: how are they actually covering that several hundred million dollar liability? And not a magical “ESPN will broker a deal” solution. Where are they going to get someone to post up several hundred million dollars in tue event that anyone that challenges the GOR ends up being wrong? If people can point to specifics there, then we can have a plausible discussion about this topic.
Let's refocus and simplify:
Status of Conferences within the current P5:
ACC: Champion snubbed for the CFP, has lost one founding member to realignment, has added two schools the Big 10 was not interested in and promoted a G5.
Big 10: Has its champ in the CFP, has not lost a school to realignment. Is adding California Los Angeles, Oregon, Southern California, and Washington next year.
Big 12: Has lost Colorado to the PAC 12, Nebraska to the Big 10, and Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas A&M to the SEC. Its champion, which is departing to the SEC after this fiscal year, is in the CFP. They have promoted 3 G5's with Central Florida, Cincinnati, and Houston, picked up the best G5/P5 tweener in Brigham Young, and since the collapse of the PAC 12 have also picked up Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah.
PAC 12: Has lost everyone but Oregon State and Washington State. Their conference champion is in the CFP but departing at the end of the fiscal year for the Big 10. Their future may be an alliance with the MWC, or none at all.
SEC: Has its champion in the CFP, and will add Texas and Oklahoma at the end of the fiscal year.
Only two conferences have not suffered a defection and both have grown. Those two have their champion in the CFP. Those two could expand again. And those two will have held 2 members each in this year's CFP field by this time next year.
The Big 12 has been denuded of brand schools with the possible exception of Kansas and perhaps Arizona. They have grown out of the G5 and the PAC 12 remnant and are losing their two power schools.
The PAC 12 has been nuked and could die.
The ACC raided once already, snubbed by the CFP, and with much acrimony internally over its future path, could yet implode and should it do so, the scenario laid out last year by Swarbrick and Warren will have come to fruition. There will be two college football solar systems with all of the planets coalescing around the Big 10 and SEC logos. Now in that regard the snub of Florida State absolutely will build the pressure within the ACC for their top schools to get a piece of the Super Two pie while the pie is still there to get. I think this situation accelerates a move to the Super Two.
And for the kicker which has nothing to do with that which is above. Out of the top 8 schools, after eliminating Oregon with a second loss, the committee picked the best 3 possible national brands and a school from the Pacific West, duplicating no markets in the process and maximizing potential viewership.
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Realignment implication - if FSU didn't want out of the ACC before ...
