The ACC filed an amended legal complaint today against Florida State, adding to the lawsuit the conference filed against the university in December, one filed in anticipation of Florida State’s own lawsuit against the ACC. It doesn’t seem that a whole lot of the complaint is new. It seems like more of a fine-tuning than an introduction of new legal arguments. What I’m wondering, though, is what the ACC’s endgame is in this.
It’s understandable that the ACC would try to fight Florida State’s fire with fire of its own. That makes some conceptual sense, even if I (and a lot of you) don’t have legal experience and don’t perfectly understand legal strategy. But is the overall goal here to make Florida State pay the maximum exit fee and then get out? Or is it to keep Florida State in the ACC?
I don’t know how bad it is to burn bridges in the arena of conference realignment. If the ACC produces some football renaissance or the Big Ten and SEC pass FSU by, scenarios are possible where FSU might change its mind and want to stay. Boosters have burned dumber dollars than the ones spent on these legal fees, and anyways, it’s likely those fees are a sunk cost. It’s possible, then, that the emotional side of this doesn’t matter. It’s possible the ACC is trying to legally prove that it is very hard to leave the ACC in order to discourage everybody—Florida State included—from trying it and to extract maximum concessions if somebody does break away. Whether that results in FSU staying or FSU paying a lot to leave might not matter for the ACC.
It’s also possible, though, that the emotional side does matter, and that the ACC is gambling here by bringing all these torches onto this particular bridge. Universities aren’t people, but they’re run by people, presidents and athletic directors who move around and boosters who gain and lose both formal and informal power. Universities are messy, especially when college football is involved. Universities also tend to build alliances and harbor grudges. I would love to know how Florida State is feeling about the other ACC schools, and what the other ACC schools are feeling about Florida State. I’d love to know what the other ACC schools think of how ACC leadership is handling this. And I wonder all this because those possibilities above—an ACC football renaissance or the Big Ten and SEC passing FSU by—aren’t that outrageous.
We’ve written plenty on this site about how it doesn’t seem the Big Ten or the SEC would currently offer FSU a full revenue share. We’ve written less about the possibility of an ACC comeback. It was less than ten years ago that a lot of the better SEC programs struggled mightily while the ACC enjoyed a juggernaut in Clemson. If post-Saban Alabama falters and even just one of Georgia and LSU gets messy (as LSU is particularly wont to do), it’s not unfathomable that there could be a power shift in college football. We aren’t headed that way right now—not in the slightest, especially with that revenue gap as large as it is—but perceptions are important in this sport, and if the ACC sneaks three teams and Notre Dame into next year’s playoff, some tides might start to shift.
Our first question, then, is whether the ACC expects Florida State to leave, regardless of who wins the lawsuit. Our second question is how they’re weighing the grudge part of this.
How Do Forfeits Count in NET?
We’ve got an odd situation in Big 12 women’s basketball: TCU is forfeiting both its games this week (against Kansas State and Iowa State) due to having too many injured players. Ten Horned Frogs played on Saturday, but Jaden Owens went down with a bad knee injury and Sedona Prince is still out with a broken finger. The math says we know of nine players who might be able to play. The headlines imply some of those nine are hurt now too.
TCU, who started the season 14–0, is 14–4 after Saturday’s defeat. They’ll be 14–6 when they come out of this. Except…
I don’t think TCU will be 14–6 in the eyes of NET.
As it is, NET only views TCU as 13–4 because it only considers games against Division I opponents. With NET so efficiency-based, I’m not sure it would consider a forfeit, and that’s even more uncertain for other metrics selection committees use. (In the men’s game, five of the six overall rating numbers are run by groups or people other than the NCAA.)
TCU is going through it on the injury front, and I have no reason to believe this isn’t about player safety.
But if your best player was hurt and was going to come back soon and then a key role player went down for the year, it might not be the worst idea in the NET era to forfeit games where you might get blown out.
Something to keep an eye on.
James Dolan Is Adam Silver’s Boss
A woman is accusing James Dolan of pressuring her into unwanted sex with him and setting her up to be assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. Here’s ESPN’s report.
My impression is that this is a civil lawsuit, and that those have lower standards of proof than criminal suits. Whether through that or an NBA investigation, I’d think we all want facts to come out. Something to remember, though, with Adam Silver already receiving some of the pressure:
Commissioners work for the owners. They work for all of them—Adam Silver isn’t James Dolan’s direct report—but they do work for the owners. Professional sports leagues in America are more or less cartels, coalitions of rich dudes working in cahoots to maintain their circle. So if Dolan needs to go—because of what we learn from this case or because of non-criminal things, like being a crappy steward of the Knicks and Madison Square Garden—it will be on the owners to make it happen. Silver might be able to do some organizing and exert some pressure, but I believe the other 29 NBA owners would be the ones who’d need to actually push Dolan out. It’s hard to get fired from a cartel.
Is the Amazon/Bally Deal Good or Bad for Baseball Fans?
Diamond Sports, floundering owners of the Bally networks, announced this morning that they’re agreeing to a deal with Amazon which will allow them to emerge from bankruptcy while transferring some streaming rights to Prime Video. This is something Major League Baseball might not be so happy about. You see, MLB was looking forward to Bally going down.
As a quick refresher: Baseball has an issue right now where local blackout restrictions are far from local, sometimes extending well beyond state lines. This would be rude but fine enough if the cable broadcasts these blackout restrictions were built to protect were coming in to everybody’s TV. They’re not, though, and sometimes it’s not only because of streaming. Brewers games are blacked out in Des Moines, but Bally Sports Wisconsin doesn’t serve the state of Iowa.
This issue has been acknowledged by Rob Manfred and his office, and one expected benefit of Diamond’s bankruptcy was that as Bally lost baseball teams and MLB picked them up, streaming would become a viable option for watching all that team’s games, even within what’s defined as the local market. That was the hope.
The hope now is that through this Amazon deal, one will be able to watch Twins games in Des Moines through Prime Video even if Bally Sports North still exists and still doesn’t serve Des Moines. My concern with this hope is that Amazon might only stream games within the cable network’s footprint? Because of local rights?
There’s a lot to iron out legally, and I hope I’m missing something here which clears this up. MLB will have a say on the legal side as well. The best case is that some teams are now available to more fans, through Prime Video. The worst case is that the Bally Networks are propped up a little longer in exchange for no viewership benefit.
Does the CBA Have a Side Gig?
In other MLB news, the A’s will receive access to revenue sharing this year even though they didn’t quite meet the technical terms laid out in the CBA. Evidently the CBA said they needed to be in a binding agreement on a stadium somewhere by the this week, and while the deal with Las Vegas isn’t binding, MLB and the MLBPA are calling it good enough.
I had no idea that prospective punishment was in the CBA.
I wonder how common those are, and which side wanted it in there.
Was this other MLB owners wanting to force John Fisher to wrap things up with the Oakland saga? Or were players concerned about it? Does the CBA have a secondary purpose in which it’s kind of the league’s constitution, so it can be the place to make things subject to legal accountability?
I would like a lawyer to read through all the Big Four CBAs and give me answers here.
I wonder what the NBA CBA says about James Dolan.
Games:
- Iowa State lost at BYU last night, and they didn’t play great but losing at BYU is to be expected. No real complaints there.
- The Blackhawks emerged on top after a long shootout against the Sharks. Their game in Buffalo has been pushed to tomorrow due to weather, but they don’t avoid a back-to-back. They still host the Islanders on Friday.
