Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
For the past two years, the entire world of College Football has been predicting the quick demise of the ACC. Well, today the ACC might just be the strongest conference of them all as the member university presidents voted unanimously to approve a TV Grant of Rights protecting the league for the next 14 years.
The agreement, as first reported by the David Glen Show in North Carolina, guarantees that if a school leaves for another conference in the next 14 years, that school would forfeit all media rights including revenue. Any monies generated from that school at home games would go to the ACC and not to the new conference.
The ACC is the fourth conference with such a deal in place. The SEC is the only conference without such a deal and reports are they will be working on one as soon as the deal on the SEC Network is finalized with ESPN.
The unanimous vote on the deal is key in showing solidarity across all the member universities and a swift statement to the Maryland Terrapins in their decision to leave in 2012.
The grant of rights will concur with the current ACC Network deal with ESPN that currently pays each member school $17 million with that number going up to $18 million per year as soon as the Notre Dame Fighting Irish join the conference.
So all the reports of the Florida State Seminoles going here and the Clemson Tigers going there are mute and irrelevant as of today. There will be no shifting of any current team until at least 2027.
The deal will have to pass the lawyer test, and it will be interesting to see how the verbiage is in relation to the addition of another school to the ACC.
But bottom line is all the ACC haters will now have to find something else to complain about because the conference is not going anywhere.
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M Shannon Smallwood is a member of the Football Writers Association of America and the US Basketball Writers Association.
Follow him @woodysmalls.
