"The ACC is cooked": Josh Pate breaks down future of Atlantic Coast as conference realignment chatter heats up
As with all of the major athletic conferences in college sports, the ACC will be expanding this season. The conference has gained three teams, including two from PAC 12, the California Golden Bears and the Stanford Cardinals.
However, while these new members are ready to begin their journey in a new conference, the long-time members of the conference are not happy. Both Florida State and Clemson have both filed lawsuits against the ACC and there is a growing group of programs that want to leave.
On Friday's edition of Late Kick with Josh Pate, he described the current situation facing the Atlantic Coast Conference:
“The ACC is cooked. It just feels cooked. It feels like the stove is on. It feels like everything’s in the pan, and you just gotta slide it in at this point... Nobody wants to be there
With any potential breakdown of a conference, it only needs one team to make a move and the whole house of cards falls down.
In the ACC's case, this is the Florida State Seminoles. The Seminoles have been wanting to leave the ACC ever since their unbeaten football program was denied a spot in the College Football Playoffs for their one loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide. This decision was financially based, as the SEC conference makes a lot more money than the one they are currently in.
The Seminoles wanted to leave because of money. But they cannot just leave as this will violate the Grant of Rights agreement, which all of the teams in the conference signed in 2016.
This agreement gave the conference the ability to make media deals. To leave this agreement, the Seminoles would have to pay a significantly large fee worth millions of dollars to make up for lost media revenue.
This is common in many rights agreements, but what makes the ACC's deal so contentious is that it will not run out for another 12 years, locking the teams into an unpopular long-term deal.
Florida State disagrees with this, and the two sides are now engaged in a lawsuit. The Clemson Tigers have also sued the conference for the same reasons.
Can the ACC survive?
For the conference, the departure of Clemson and Florida State would be the beginning of the end of the conference. These two teams are the two strongest teams in the conference when it comes to football.
As football is by far the highest earning sport, the departure of Clemson and Florida State would create a massive hole in the conference's finances, which they may never recover from.
The rest of the ACC are basketball powerhouses. The absence of Clemson and Florida State would allow the likes of the Duke Blue Devils and the North Carolina Tar Heels to become the strongest teams in the conference.
But even these teams wants to leave. There is a growing movement in the upper echelons of Chapel Hill that want the Tar Heels to leave the conference for financial reasons. They are a part of a group known as "The Magnificent Seven," a group of seven ACC members who disagree with the conference.
Do you think that Florida State will leave the ACC soon?