Florida State just finished one of their worst seasons in program history on the field. Their 2-10 record was their worst since 1974. And a year after going undefeated and being jobbed out of a College Football Playoff berth due to injuries, the Seminoles didn’t even come close to a bowl game.
But they are still fighting in the courtroom though!
Florida State launched a bold plan to challenge the ACC Grant of Rights and exit the conference a year ago. The ACC is locked into their Grant of Rights until 2036 when the conference signed a deal with ESPN that helped give birth to the ACC Network. Florida State is arguing that the university can exit the deal early since ESPN has the option to extend the deal after the 2027 season. The ACC and ESPN are obviously arguing otherwise.
Of course, given the ACC-ESPN deal is incredibly favorable to the television thanks to the explosion of college football media rights, they would never entertain the idea of not extending it. In fact, the lack of media revenue from the ACC is why Florida State wants to leave in the first place, presumably for the greener pastures of the SEC or Big Ten. (That is, if they’d be willing to accept the Seminoles.)
Now that the saga between Florida State, the ACC, and ESPN has hit the legal system, it has barely moved forward a yard. Currently, the central issue at hand is whether the case will move forward in Florida or North Carolina. Florida State would obviously prefer for the case to be heard on their territory while the ACC is hoping for the same where their home offices are located. And to top it all off, Clemson has also launched their own lawsuit against the ACC in South Carolina.
The North Carolina case currently sits in the state’s Supreme Court. And interestingly, it’s become a political issue as almost a dozen Republican state Attorneys General have come down on the side of the university, arguing that the case should not move forward in North Carolina.
Via the Carolina Journal:
Attorneys general in Florida and 11 other states support Florida State University in its legal battle with the Atlantic Coast Conference over sports media rights. An earlier court filing labeled the case a $700 million dispute.
The North Carolina Supreme Court issued an order Wednesday accepting a friend-of-the-court brief in the case from AGs in Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah. Each attorney general is a Republican.
The ACC is fighting both Florida State and Clemson in court over media rights. The conference has asked the state Supreme Court to link the schedules for separate suits against the two schools. Separate lawsuits are moving through courtrooms in South Carolina and Florida.
The 12 state AGs supporting Florida State echo its argument against the case moving forward in North Carolina’s courts.
“FSU and other member institutions assigned to the ACC certain media rights in a ‘grant of rights’ that the ACC is now trying to use to prevent FSU from leaving the ACC,” the 12 state AGs wrote. “The ACC has sued the FSU Board in North Carolina, seeking a declaratory judgment that the grant of rights transferred ownership of all of FSU’s sports media rights through 2036 regardless of whether FSU is a member of the association; an injunction preventing FSU from ever challenging the grant of rights, participating in ACC governance, or disclosing confidential information; and over $5 million in damages for FSU’s actions in attempting to assert its rights under the grant of rights and the ACC’s constitution and bylaws.”
What is really interesting about this development is that Republican AGs have sided with ESPN in their fight to keep Venu Sports alive in their lawsuit with Fubo. That issue has seen most Democrats support Fubo in their efforts to shut down the joint streaming effort between ESPN, Fox Sports, and Warner Bros. Discovery based on anti-competitive means. And yet, here the Republican state attorney generals are on the opposite side as ESPN in the Florida State-ACC dispute.
How much of that is actual governing philosophy and how much of it is just trying to support their Florida colleague is up for debate. What isn’t up for debate is that there is seemingly no end in sight to the ACC-Florida State case that could take years to fully develop.
While we really haven’t even got to the merits of the case yet, the jurisdictional fight can be a very important one. As we’ve seen previously in America, finding a friendly judge in Florida can make all the difference.
