While the ACC managed to get comparable money to the SEC & Big Ten for its main TV rights, the league signed away all of its third tier rights to ESPN as part of the deal for essentially nothing. What about the ACC? The league signed a horrendously backwards looking deal in 2011 with ESPN that has been the source of the conference’s woes to this day. ![]() The SEC followed the same blueprint with their own conference network in 2014 in partnership with ESPN. By collecting schools’ third tier rights into one pot and getting it on cable, the conference turned meaningless, early September, non-conference games that were previously only available as overpriced pay-per-views into a gold mine. In 2007, the Big Ten’s creation of its own conference network brought college sports into a brave new world. On the academic side of things, the ACC had the best collection of schools in the South and promised FSU a university partnership that would help boost FSU’s academic prestige.īut the media landscape would have a seismic shift. The ACC’s basketball prestige was second to none and their commitment to non-revenue sports was unequaled outside of California. Besides monetary factors, the ACC offered Florida State a chance to help build an identity other than being a party school with a football team. Thanks to a far different environment for TV rights, the ACC generated more revenue per school than either the SEC or Big Ten as recently as 2001 and signed a massive TV deal with ESPN shortly after the first Big East raid in 2004. ![]() Nevertheless, football coaches don’t make conference realignment decisions university presidents & athletic directors do. The oft-mentioned Bobby Bowden quote about the ACC being an easier path to a national championship was true. However, the ACC was the better choice at the time. In hindsight, it’s easy to view Florida State joining the ACC over the SEC in 1992 as a mistake. ![]() “Something has to change:” FSU AD Michael Alford talks ACC financial outlook
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