Florida State Reveals Jaw-Dropping Cost To Leave ACC After College Football Playoff Snub

After being left out of the College Football Playoff despite the perfect record and a conference championship, the Florida State Seminoles are exploring leaving the ACC.

But in order to do so, it would cost the university an absolutely astronomical amount of money.

Florida State’s Board of Trustees met Friday morning to discuss the potential of leaving the conference (presumably to join the Big Ten or SEC).

But in order to do so, the university would need to break the grant of rights it signed with the ACC.

Matt Baker of the Tampa Bay Times reports that “an outside attorney, David Ashburn, is going through financial figures now. He said the penalty to leave the ACC is $572 million.”

Though Ashburn then argued that the grant of rights is unenforceable.

“The ACC has failed to appropriately give FSU the value of its athletic program media rights,” Baker reports that Ashburn said. “In fact, they diluted those agreement rights going forward.”

Florida State explored leaving the conference long before the CFP snub.

In November, the Seminoles launched their own streaming channel that may well have foreshadowed a move.

And even prior to that, FSU athletic director Michael Alford gave the conference an ultimatum regarding revenue distribution.

“Something has to change because we cannot compete nationally being $30 million behind every year,” Alford said. “It’s not one year. We’re talking about $30 million compounded year after year.”

Alford told board members at the time that Florida State contributes roughly 15% of the value in the ACC’s media rights deal but the school only gets 7% of the distributions.

So it’s easy to see why they’d want out.

And they may not have to pay anywhere near that number.

Following the discussion, Florida State’s board voted unanimously to file a lawsuit against the ACC challenging the massive penalties.

Will it work?

Who know?!

But it’ll be a heck of show until we find out.