Pete Thamel explains importance of Clemson's lawsuit against ACC

Clemson continued the ever-interesting conversation about conference realignment in a major way last week when it filed a suit against the ACC in Pickens County, S.C.

It was the first step by the program in a potential departure from the conference, though there are still several steps that must happen for the Tigers to actually successfully leave the ACC.

ESPN insider Pete Thamel broke down the importance of the suit on the College GameDay Podcast.

“I think (it) was hugely important symbolically,” Thamel said. “Clemson says in not-so-uncertain terms, ‘We want to leave.’ Now they didn’t actually say they were leaving, but they said we want to leave and if we leave we are encumbered by all of these things. We don’t have the rights to our games. We have to pay. They used the word exorbitant five times in the 22-page legal filing to describe the exit fee. So they thought the exit fee was too much, they thought they should own their rights.”

Florida State also filed a similar suit against the ACC, trying to get out of the reportedly ‘ironclad’ Grant of Rights, which runs through 2036. The Grant of Rights binds the league, schools and broadcast partners until the rights deal with ESPN expires in 2036.

In other words, Clemson can’t do a whole lot unless it finds a way out of the Grant of Rights.

“I don’t think legally they have some like open and shut, slam dunk case,” Thamel said. “And I say that because they’ve wanted to leave for a while, as has Florida State. And if they had a really linear way to do it, they would have done it by now. And breaking a Grant of Rights is hard. If you could break Grant of Rights, Texas would have done it in the state of Texas to leave the Big 12.”

In the lawsuit, Clemson claimed that the ACC’s Grant of Rights “hinders Clemson’s ability to meaningfully explore its options regarding conference membership.”

It effectively keeps the Tigers from seeking greener pastures elsewhere, in an era when the Big Ten and SEC are consolidating power and taking ever-bigger chunks of the revenue pie.

So Clemson’s recent lawsuit is an exploratory move to get the ball rolling, in a sense.

“I think this is more, ‘We’re going to leave. We are now formally preparing for the fight to leave,’ and I think that’s the ultimate significance of Monday with Clemson filing against the ACC,” Thamel said.