In an interview with John Kurtz at Big 12 Media Days on Wednesday, Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger said that there are “early conversations” between the Big 12 and a couple of ACC schools looking to leave the league.
Florida State and Clemson have been attempting to get out of the ACC for quite some time now, and an exit to the Big 12 appears to be one of the options on the table at this point in time.
“There is at least early conversation between the Big 12 and those schools about the possibility,” Dellenger told Kurtz. “I don’t know that it’s anything serious yet because they do have to get out of the ACC, whether that’s through a settlement or a court ruling. So, we could be months, or even years away from something, but that does seem to be one of the possibilities, is the Big 12.”
Now, before you run to the water cooler and start telling your friends that the Big 12 is about to get the Tigers and Seminoles, let’s take a couple steps back.
While it is a possibility, Dellenger did point out that there were two options that the schools would choose ahead of a move to the Big 12 right now.
“When you look at Florida State and Clemson’s options, the first option would probably be to get into the Big Ten or the SEC,” Dellenger said. “The second option would be to reform the ACC with a smaller number of teams where you would have a financial advantage because you wouldn’t split the TV distribution with 18, you would just split it with 10.
“Option 3 is to join another league, which obviously there’s only one other power league, and that’s the Big 12.”
Getting the ACC’s biggest football brands would take some serious cheddar, and in order for the Big 12 to come up with that, they’d likely have to jump into private equity with both feet.
“You’d have to not only help them get out, you’d have to pay them in distribution in an amount that is at least close to what the Big Ten and SEC are paying their schools,” Dellenger continued. “The Big 12 gets mid-$30M, or just call it $40M a year per school in distribution. In the SEC and Big Ten, they’re at more like $70M, which that number will go up. If you do use private equity or whatever other financial means to get a Florida State or a Clemson — are the Big 12 administrators okay with an unequal revenue distribution?
“Would they be okay with paying Florida State and Clemson $10-$20M more a year, and that’s a question I don’t know the answer to, except to say that would probably be hard to convince them to do that. But, if it means adding blue blood football powers that you need, maybe there’s a shot.”
