ACC Proposes Significant Legal Action Against Florida State

The Pitt Panthers' home conference is countersuing Florida State.

PITTSBURGH -- The home conference of the Pitt Panthers has taken some stunning legal action to counter Florida State's lawsuit against it, according to reporting from Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde and others. 

Forde reported that the ACC, of which Pitt has been a member since 2013, has filed an amended lawsuit against Florida State this week, citing “serial breaches of critical legal promises and obligations,” and the league is seeking to exclude them from decision-making that affects all of the member schools while the lawsuit is still pending. 

News story: The ACC files an amended lawsuit against Florida State, seeking to exclude the Seminoles from conference business while their legal battle creates a conflict of interest, among other measures. https://t.co/Sm0Ktkbpx7

— Pat Forde (@ByPatForde) January 17, 2024

“Despite its actions and clear, direct and material conflict of interest, Florida State continued and continues to participate in the management of the Conference,” the complaint said. “Thus, Florida State participates in deciding fundamental policy questions for the Conference, even as it breaches its contracts and seeks to undermine the Conference’s objectives and purpose.”

The ACC requested “a permanent injunction barring Florida State from participating in the management of the affairs of the Conference while it has a direct and material conflict of interest with the purposes and objectives of the Conference.”

Florida State has taken drastic steps to try and release themselves from the ACC's grant of rights agreement, leave the conference and further destabilize Pitt's home conference. The school announced in December that they would sue the league over the matter following a meeting of the Board of Trustees, alleging that the ACC's grant of rights agreement, tied to a media rights deal with ESPN, amounts to restraint of trade, breach of contract and failure to perform on account of the conference. FSU cites a stagnant revenue stream and "draconian" penalties for withdrawing from the conference as evidence. The league asserts that FSU violated that agreement by publicly disclosing the financial terms of the agreement with ESPN. 

According to Noah Hiles of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, when reached for comment, Pitt athletics said they'd defer to the ACC's statement on the matter, which included a scathing rebuttal of the Seminoles.

This lawsuit is a preliminary step for the Seminoles, who have been beating the drum about the ACC not being the right home for them in a college sports landscape that is becoming increasingly football-centric and attached to the obscene amounts of money that the sport generates for months.

FSU has not hidden its intentions to explore avenues for a release from the ACC's grant of rights agreement, which ties up television revenue from the league's broadcast partners to conference membership and runs through 2036. No legal action has been taken but lawyers from the school have been examining the document for the better part of a year, according to an earlier report from Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic.

FSU's narrow snub from the College Football Playoff this year, despite an undefeated record and ACC Championship game win over Louisville by a double-digit margin, has rekindled and given more muscle to ideas that the Seminoles must move from the ACC to one of the so-called "Power 2" conferences in the Big 10 and SEC. 

If they would make it to one of those conferences, they would theoretically have a better shot of making the four-team Playoff because of the perceived prestige of those leagues (but this is a mostly moot point because the Playoff is expanding to include 12 teams next season). Membership in the SEC or Big 10 would certainly afford them annual payouts from the conference that are vastly richer than those from the ACC. 

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