Anthony Wilson
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — It’s business as usual in the ACC for Florida State and Clemson at the conference’s annual spring meetings, even as the schools continue to argue with the conference inside the courtroom.
The ACC is a battlefield, with Florida State and Clemson locked in several legal disputes as they challenge the league’s charter and contemplate an exit from the conference. The catalyst for this turmoil is the growing revenue disparity between the ACC and the more financially robust Power 2 conferences (Big Ten and SEC), which can amount to up to $40 million per year for their members.
For now, everyone is acting professionally, even if it seems inevitable that Clemson and Florida State’s marriage to the ACC is coming to an end. Clemson and Florida State administrators were not excluded from meetings this week at the conference’s spring meeting and the lawsuits – FSU v. ACC, ACC v. FSU, Clemson v. The athletic directors were friendly and professional. Alford joked with his colleagues. Wake Forest AD John Currie even got a laugh from Alford when he leaned behind his colleague during an impromptu meeting with the media.
And no one spoke quietly in the hallways of the Ritz-Carlton as the meetings stretched into Tuesday night.
Still, the unspoken question persisted: Is this marriage salvageable?
“Let’s just hope that happens,” Florida State athletics director Michael Alford said Tuesday. “We have great partners in this conference, great relationships, but at the end of the day, we have to do what’s best for the state of Florida and look at the changing environment of college athletics and make sure we’re there to be successful.”
Alford says there is “no ill will in the room” at conference meetings. Money, however, drives everything – and can harm relationships, no matter how strong they are. A year ago here, Florida State and Clemson successfully pushed for new “success initiatives” that would reward ACC schools for his success on the field. Those revenue structures are still being tweaked, Alford said.
It was also here a year ago that news leaked that seven ACC schools had explored possible exits from the conference after studying the league’s strict rights grant. Such an exit before the media agreement with ESPN expires (2036) could cost schools more than $500 million each.
Since then, the Florida State Board of Trustees has held several meetings to discuss the university’s future in the ACC. In August, trustee Justin Roth asked Alford and university president Richard McCullough for an exit plan by August 2024.
“If you go back to the president and I, we never said, ‘Hey, we want to leave the conference,’” Alford said. “We’re letting the court process play out. Our job is to make sure, with all the changes in college athletics — and I’ve said this for the last two years — it’s to make sure that the state of Florida is in the best possible position to be successful.”
Clemson athletics director Graham Neff declined to comment when contacted by CBS Sports.
Developments in college athletics have also loosened the ACC’s grip as a power player. Undefeated Florida State was excluded from the College football Playoff in December, perhaps rushing FSU to file suit against the ACC. Earlier this year, the CFP opted to provide the ACC with 17% of revenue shares starting in 2026, which equates to about $8 million less than its Big Ten and SEC counterparts. Meanwhile, the college athletics model is headed toward implosion as the The House v. NCAA could be resolved as early as May 23, according to Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports. The deal will likely put schools under pressure for a new player revenue-sharing model that will cost between $15 million and $25 million per year.
Meanwhile, the unrest continues at the ACC. North Carolina trustees this week expressed frustration over a growing revenue disparity and openly criticized longtime athletics director Bubba Cunningham on Monday over an expected $17 million shortfall in the school’s athletics budget. .
“I don’t really have any reaction,” Cunningham said Monday after leaving a meeting of ACC athletics directors. “I haven’t spoken to anyone. You know I’ve been here the whole time.”
The UNC Board of Trustees will meet Thursday and Cunningham will participate in that meeting to address those concerns.
The landscape has changed and will continue to change. The Pac-12 has all but dissolved – only Oregon State and Washington State remain. The Big Ten is expanding, as is the ACC, which has broken geographic lines with the addition of Cal and Stanford in addition to SMU. The SEC is adding Oklahoma and Texas. The Big 12 added eight schools in the span of one calendar year.
In the ACC, Clemson and Florida State might just be the lynchpin of another round of chaos.
“We’re looking at two institutions that want success and see the changing environment in college sports and want programs to compete at the highest level and understand that in order to compete at that higher level, we need to have our options available,” Alford said. . “And I’m speaking, actually, on behalf of the state of Florida, that we need to have our options, but I assume Clemson is also looking at the same model that’s happening on the college scene and wants its programs to compete at the national level, the a national elite level.”
