Florida State’s lawsuit against the ACC will proceed during the conference’s ongoing appeal, a Leon County (Fla.) circuit judge ruled Friday.
It was a small procedural win for the Seminoles in their half-a-billion-dollar, multi-state litigation with the league, but Florida State’s outside counsel also framed it as necessary progress for an entire college sports ecosystem trying to figure out the future of one of the Power Four conferences and two of its biggest brands.
“Having uncertainty and having no answers is not helpful…” Florida State’s outside counsel, Peter Rush, said in a virtual court hearing. “I think everyone needs this to move forward and reach at least a closer place to resolution so that everyone — the ACC, Clemson, Florida State, all the members of the ACC, every conference in the United States — can have some certainty as to what the rules are and actually what these contracts say.”
Those contracts include TV agreements and the ACC’s grant of rights. What they mean is in dispute and playing out in courts in three states: Florida (where Florida State has sued the ACC), South Carolina (where Clemson has sued the ACC) and North Carolina (where the ACC has sued them both).
Florida State and Clemson have argued their TV rights only belong to the ACC as long as they’re members of the conference. The ACC contends the schools granted those rights to the league through as far as 2036. Hundreds of millions of dollars hang in the balance.
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So, too, does the next major wave of conference realignment. Florida State’s counsel hinted at that issue Friday.
Rush said there is real, ongoing harm because the ACC is “misrepresenting” the grant of rights and “suggesting that other parties should not talk or deal with us to discuss our potential future.”
“I think we need one of these cases to go forward now because there is a cloud hanging over not just Florida State but apparently Clemson, as well, that the ACC is telling the world that it owns Florida property for 12 years after Florida State leaves,” Rush said.
Friday’s ruling allows for the Florida case to proceed, for now, pending one of two reviews by Florida’s First District Court of Appeal.
The ACC sought to pause Florida State’s case for jurisdictional reasons. The league’s counsel, Vivekka Suppiah, said the delay would save unnecessary expenses and put the dueling lawsuits on the same footing.
Florida State disagreed. Both the Seminoles and Tigers have appealed the ACC’s lawsuits to the North Carolina Supreme Court over issues like sovereign immunity. If Florida State fails there, its counsel said Friday, the school plans to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
(Photo: Rich Storry / Getty Images)
