Mike Farrell Sports

College Football Recruiting, Opinion, and Analysis

Florida State Has No Shot At Getting Out of ACC; Law Will Not Protect a Party From a Bad Deal

Seminoles Made Their Bed, Now They Have to Lie In It; They Will Also Have to Settle For the Women’s Soccer Championship as the College Football Playoff Will Not Include Them

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By Scott Salomon

During a 24-hour flurry the Atlantic Coast Conference faced implosion. The ACC sued one its members, the Florida State University Board of Trustees, and Florida State turned around and filed their own lawsuit against the ACC.

The bottom line is that Florida State will not win in Court as they entered into a bad contract, the Grant of Rights to the ACC, and they now have to live with it.

Remember, the law does not protect stupidity. If you make a bad deal, most of the time you are stuck with it. In this instance, the Seminoles are stuck with the deal they made with the ACC, who in turn made a deal with ESPN that reaps far less of a reward than those of other conferences.

The ACC gave its members a contract with a Grant of Rights and a television contract with ESPN that was extremely lopsided. ESPN got the rights to the ACC package and they created the ACC Network to air its football games along with other non-revenue sports.

Florida State is just crying sour grapes because other conferences have better television contracts and will stand to make between $30 million and $40 million a year for the next ten years. 

The Seminoles also believe that due to the fact that the South Eastern Conference has a much richer contract with ESPN, they were purposely omitted from the College Football Playoff Invitational Tournament which selected a one-loss Alabama team over an undefeated FSU team that also won the ACC Championship.

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Let’s look at Florida State’s lawsuit.

The seven counts of the lawsuit are as follows:

  • Count I: The ACC punishments are unenforceable under Florida Law As ‘unreasonable restraint of trade’ under Florida Statute 542.18
  • Count II: The ACC punishments are unenforceable penalties
  • Count III: The ACC materially breached its contracts with FSU
  • Count IV: The ACC breached its fiduciary duties to FSU
  • Count V: Fundamental failure or frustration of contractual purpose
  • Count VI: The ACC Grant of Rights is unenforceable for several other reasons
  • Count VII: The ACC punishments violate Florida public policy and are unconscionable 

First, the gravamen of the matter is that Florida State voluntarily signed a contract giving ACC the rights to negotiate a television contract with ESPN on behalf of all conference members.

The fact that the ACC did a terrible job negotiating and the Seminoles acquiesced to it, does not mean that the ACC will stand to lose perhaps its most valuable franchise. Jim Swofford blew the deal with ESPN, undersold his conference and left the ACC with no leverage and a terrible deal.

Unfortunately for the Seminoles, they are stuck with it. They entered into a contract and they must be bound by its terms.

There is no unreasonable restraint of trade when a party allows another party to negotiate on its behalf and it makes a bad deal. The Grant of Rights was voluntarily entered into between the university and the conference. No other conference members have filed suit or joined in on the FSU action.

Remember, the law does not protect a party from getting a raw deal when all parties are represented by counsel and they were in equal bargaining positions. 

All of the terms of the Grant of Rights were agreed to by Florida State. They did not have to sign it and could have made a move to get out of the conference at that point in time. Hindsight is always 20/20, but they never should have signed the agreement granting said rights.

To say that the terms are unfair years later when the Seminoles learn of other conferences getting richer, while they stay stagnant in the ACC is no basis to get out of a contract.

This never would have happened if FSU was selected to the Invitational and actually made the four-team playoff.

Next, the lawsuit alleges that the ACC owed a fiduciary duty to Florida State and it breached those duties. This argument will fall on deaf ears. The ACC did not hurt Florida State in any way, shape or form. They just negotiated a bad deal. That does not constitute a breach of a fiduciary duty.

The rest of the complaint is mere fluff and I do not think that it will withstand a motion to dismiss, which you can bet will be coming from the ACC counsel. 

ACC lawyers might also seek to consolidate the cases and have them heard in North Carolina, where the ACC is situated. A change of venue motion should be forthcoming. The fact that the conference filed first could play a role in moving FSU’s case to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

Either party might seek to have the cases moved to Federal Court where the judges are appointed and not elected, so there is less of a perceived local bias. Should the case be heard in Tallahassee, and an elected judge dismisses FSU’s causes of action, he or she would not stand in good stead to get re-elected.

Football rules in Tallahassee above all else. Perhaps that is why Governor Ron DeSantis put a line item in his budget for the University to get $1 million to investigate and fight the College Football Playoff Committee. 

Now, if February 2025 comes and the lawsuits are still in the Courts and ESPN opts to not renew the agreement and there is no contract in place and the ACC Network disappears, then FSU might have an argument. However, if the ACC remains intact, what are the realistic chances that ESPN bails on the conference and says that they do not want to broadcast the ACC games, despite the fact that they are losing money with the ACC Network.

But, that’s a story for another day. 

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night.

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