The Atlantic Coast Conference, Clemson and Florida State are ready to move forward together after legal fights that threatened the stability of the league.
Each approved a settlement Tuesday to end the crossfire of lawsuits between the member schools and the ACC, signing off on a deal that changes the revenue-distribution model in a way that would theoretically benefit both schools with marquee football brands. The deal also revises and clarifies the long-term costs for a school to leave the conference.
It doesn’t offer permanent security. Notably, the 2030-31 season now looms as a significant marker. But it does stabilize the coming years for a league that had heard doomsayers questioning its survival amid a growing revenue gap behind the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten.
“Today’s resolution begins the next chapter of this storied league and further solidifies the ACC as a premier conference,” commissioner Jim Phillips said in a statement, noting the parties would dismiss pending lawsuits in Florida and the Carolinas.
“The settlements, coupled with the ACC’s continued partnership with ESPN, allow us to focus on our collective future — including Clemson and Florida State — united in an 18-member conference demonstrating the best in intercollegiate athletics.”
The approval came after the ACC’s Board of Directors — made up of university presidents and chancellors — gave its OK in a call Tuesday morning, followed by separate approval from trustees at Clemson and FSU.
Most notably, the revenue-distribution model will now incorporate TV viewership as a way for the league’s top programs to generate more revenue. That formula would see 60% of the league’s TV revenues go into a pot for distribution based on a rolling five-year formula tied to viewership ratings, while the remaining 40% would be distributed equally among the members.
The upside could be $15 million or more for top-earning schools, while it could also result in a decline of about $7 million for others, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press on Monday. That person spoke on condition of anonymity because neither the league nor the schools had publicly addressed the deal terms at the time.
It’s the latest in a series of what Phillips has previously called “aggressive” efforts to generate more revenue, which has included expansion to include California, Stanford and SMU, as well as this year’s launch of the “success initiative” that allows teams to keep money generated by their own postseason success.
A slideshow presentation for Clemson’s trustees, for example, projected that the viewership and postseason-incentives wrinkles could mean more than $120 million of new revenue for Clemson in the next six years.
“At the end of the day, this innovative distribution model which further incentivizes performance and investment will help strengthen the ACC,” Clemson athletic director Graham Neff told trustees before the vote. “A strong ACC is good for Clemson. And a strong Clemson is good for the ACC.”
The growing revenue gap — which amounted to roughly $6 million less per school than in the SEC and $15 million in the Big Ten according to tax documents from the 2022-23 season — had been at the root of the unrest. Schools had signed a grant-of-rights deal to give the ACC control of their media rights through the end of the league’s TV deal with ESPN in 2036, while the league could impose massive exit fees on any school that sought to leave for another league before the expiration of that deal.
Those costs had been a key subject of FSU’s December 2023 lawsuit and Clemson’s in March 2024, while the ACC had conversely sued both schools. The settlement now provides a roadmap to how any early exit might work.
Specifically, the slideshow at the Clemson trustee meeting reported the exit fee would be $165 million for the 2026 fiscal year, but would descend by $18 million per year until leveling off around $75 million for the 2030-31 season. And despite the grant-of-rights provision, any school that paid the exit fee would be allowed to exit with its media rights, according to that presentation.
That 2031 date would largely align with expiration of media deals for the Big Ten (2029-30 season) and the Big 12 (2030-31), while the SEC’s deal runs through 2033-34. And that could set up a potential countdown for massive realignment in the rapidly changing landscape of college athletics.
Then again, it’s hard to predict much beyond the immediate future. And that’s where the ACC has strengthened its footing.
It was roughly a month ago that ESPN exercised its option to extend its media base-rights agreement, aligning that deal with a separate one that covers their partnership for the ACC Network through 2036. The league is in its first year of expansion that has created $600 million in additional incremental revenue gains through the ACC’s ESPN deal, with the new arrivals agreeing to reduced or no TV money at all for the coming years.
The Phillips-championed “success initiative” could amount to about $25 million in a year for a school, tied mostly to performance in the expanded College Football Playoff. The viewership plan accomplishes a similar goal for Phillips: the additional money would theoretically be accessible to any league member, incentivizing a school to field a program that viewers want to watch because of its elevated success.
“I got hundreds of emails and text messages and phone calls from friends and people I didn’t know over the last 13 months encouraging us in this journey and I’m proud of where we’ve landed,” FSU trustee and former Seminoles quarterback Drew Weatherford said during that meeting.
“We made some commitments 14 months ago to make sure we could do everything in our power to compete at the highest level, and I think we’ve done that here.”
___
AP Sports Writers Will Graves in Pittsburgh and Mark Long in Florida contributed to this report.
___
AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll
