Pitt Rival Explores Leaving ACC

The Pitt Panthers' home conference could become more unstable soon.

PITTSBURGH -- The Pitt Panthers' home conference of the ACC is facing an existential crisis, with one of its flagship members threatening to leave for greener pastures in coming years.

According to reporting from The Athletic's Nicole Auerbach, ESPN's Pete Thamel and others, the Board of Trustees at Florida State has called an emergency meeting for the end of this week, where they will begin exploring possible avenues to leave the ACC and further destabilize Pitt's home conference. 

BREAKING: Florida State has scheduled an emergency meeting of its Board of Trustees for Friday morning.

This is the first concrete step needed in any effort to enable the school to take legal action against the ACC to challenge the grant of rights: https://t.co/yMqciYLE3K

— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) December 21, 2023

This is just 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 their 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 lawers from the school have been examining the document for the better part of a year, according to Auerbach. 

"The school would likely need board approval before filing a complaint against its own conference, with trustees taking part in that major decision as key constituents," Auerbach said. "The move would not necessarily mean that the Seminoles are committed to leaving the ACC, and there are no assurances from the 16-team SEC or the 18-team Big Ten that invitations to higher-revenue conferences are waiting. FSU athletic director Michael Alford told The Athletic last month that he did not think it made sense for the school to go independent. But officials at the school feel hamstrung by the lack of clarity surrounding potential ACC exit fees and exit procedures and could prioritize getting answers to those questions before taking action that would sever ties with the ACC."

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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