Did the ACC’s admission of inferiority push Clemson to sue now?

The lawsuit Clemson filed Tuesday against the ACC did not emerge from nowhere. Though Florida State took action first — suing the ACC in Florida in December a day after the ACC sued Florida State in North Carolina — the Tigers have been studying their legal options regarding the ACC’s grant of rights and exit penalty for years.

So what pushed Clemson to file now? 

Was it Florida State pointing out in a filing in the ACC’s case against the Seminoles in a North Carolina court that the full ACC board didn’t hold a required vote before the conference decided to sue the Seminoles? 

Did Clemson’s attorneys feel their arguments were finally fully baked and ready to go to court?

Or was it the ACC admitting in writing that it is now a second-class citizen compared to the Big Ten and the SEC?

That last one feels like the most important development, and it took place this week.

On Tuesday, the College Football Playoff officially released the news that the commissioners of the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame had agreed to a new media rights deal with ESPN that will run through the 2031 season. What the CFP did not include in that e-mail was the revenue split, but people involved in the negotiations had already leaked those numbers. And they served as an admission by the ACC — and the Big 12 — that they no longer exist on the same level as the Big Ten and the SEC.

The Big Ten and SEC will each distribute about $21 million per school from CFP revenue. The ACC will distribute about $13 million per school. The Big 12 will distribute about $12 million per school.

The leagues had been headed this way since Oklahoma and Texas agreed to join the SEC and UCLA and USC agreed to join the Big Ten. But reading the tea leaves and putting something in writing are two different things. When the ACC’s leadership approved the memorandum of understanding for the new rights deal this week, it amounted to an admission of defeat.

Every Florida State and Clemson (and North Carolina and Miami) complaint about the ACC not being serious about competing for national championships in football was confirmed by the ACC officially laying down and admitting its inferiority to the Big Ten and SEC. This isn’t some conspiracy theory based on the CFP selection committee leaving a 13-0 Florida State out of the four-team bracket.

This is the ACC conceding in writing that the Big Ten and SEC are better leagues that are deserving of more CFP revenue. There is no other way to spin it, and it represents a stunning fall for a league that kicked off this century’s realignment boom in order to make itself a respectable football league.

When the Bowl Championship Series formed in the late 1990s, six leagues (ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-10, SEC) had most favored status and treated one another as equals. The ACC gutted the Big East prior to the formation of the College Football Playoff in the early 2010s, and the number of equals dropped to five. 

The Pac-12 melted down last year, and that number fell to four. That meltdown happened in part because now-former commissioner George Kliavkoff was okey-doked into joining “The Alliance” with the Big Ten in 2021. Who else got duped into The Alliance? ACC commissioner Jim Phillips.

The Alliance didn’t seem to have any real goals other than to cast the SEC as a big meanie for taking Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12. (Note that then-Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, despite being the actual aggrieved party, did NOT join The Alliance.) The Alliance’s only actual achievement was pushing back the start of the 12-team CFP by a year. That helped the Big Ten lock down its TV megadeal without a competing product in the marketplace, which may have been then-commissioner Kevin Warren’s goal in forming The Alliance. When the Pac-12 got raided in 2022, the call came from inside Alliance headquarters. The Alliance also got a 13-0 Florida State screwed out of the 2023 CFP and further eroded any leverage the two non-Big Ten leagues might have had from 2021 forward.

The Big Ten and SEC, surrounded by blood in the water, decided now was the time to codify their superiority.

Could Phillips or any other ACC leader have done anything to stop this? Maybe not. Maybe the die was cast when the news broke in July 2021 that Oklahoma and Texas were headed to the SEC. Or maybe in July 2022 when news broke that UCLA and USC were headed to the Big Ten. The ACC didn’t have the option to fight for an equal share with the Big Ten and the SEC, because the Big Ten and SEC are better football leagues with more desirable brands.

There can be a College Football Playoff that most fans will watch without the ACC. There can’t be one without either the Big Ten or the SEC. That’s the hard truth that got rammed down the ACC’s throat this week.

Florida State has been warning about this privately for more than a year. Seminoles leaders sounded a public alarm in August 2023. Those Florida State leaders were pilloried for being so vocal. 

But they were proven 100 percent correct this week. And suddenly Clemson has joined their team publicly instead of merely agreeing privately.

Will another ACC school join the fight against the conference? Now that the league has admitted its inferiority in writing, it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising.