Ha, thanks. I was at the forefront of the reallignment story on some FSU message boards, including beating the drum for the Big 12 for awhile. Or more specifically, for considering the Big 12. One year ago I was definitely playing the devil's advocate for a move to the Big 12. By June, I was already moving off that and saying FSU should step away. As a reallignment junkie, that WVU board was/is ground central for rumors and news.
I still find myself checking in. There are a lot of obnoxious folks there, but some decent folks too. I can't blame most of them for their world view, although I blame some of them for the way they express it. I don't try to pick apart their world view, they're welcome to it, but I do occasionally try to bring some rational thought. There are some obnoxious ACC and FSU folks on there too that talk more smack than facts, and I try to offset that.
I actually got to know the Dude a bit, and I like him as a person, he just got in over his head. He threw himself in over his head maybe is more accurate.
I'm in a minority in that I'd still like to see WVU in the ACC. They are a different breed for sure, but we don't have a whole lot of that passion and enthusiasm in the ACC right now.
As for this ACC Network/Raycom thing, it's not as if this is a surprise. Everyone that follows the ACC contracts like myself knows exactly what is involved, including the sublicensed games to Fox, so it's not like ACC/ESPN folks are caught by surprise. It's an issue, but it's certainly not a landmine that was just discovered.
There are two key points:
1) Raycom Sports exists as an entity only at the wishes of the ACC. That's not debatable, Raycom is on the record on that. They can fight tooth and nail to enforce their current agreement, and disband in 2027. Or they can play ball, and be a player in perpetuity. Will giving up this contract hurt their bottom line? Might they have to go from say 50 employees to 30 employees? Who knows. But it's hard to imagine that they would sign their 2027 death warrant. That even precludes the long cooperative history and the fact that they "owe" the ACC their current existence. They will not exist in 15 years.
2) The deal with Raycom is not actually between the ACC and Raycom. It's between ESPN and Raycom. ESPN subleases the content. So ESPN isn't a third party trying to buy rights it doesn't have, like with the SEC, they are trying to get back rights they subleased. I would imagine there are terms and procedures built in to all ESPN agreements for ESPN doing so. I have no idea if the penalties are high, but they are surely there, it's not like this kind of thing never happens when you are talking about 10-15 year contracts. And even if the costs to break the contract are very nasty and expensive, if ESPN breaks the contract, Raycom is dead. Gone. They don't even make it to 2027 in that case.
So Raycom has every incentive to play ball and be part of the future. Now that's not to say there aren't some interesting issues at stake. It's hard to imagine that Raycom stations would still have live OTA ACC content on their family of stations, that might go away. Or maybe they retain rights to something like the ACC tournament like they have now, which would never end up on the ACC network anyway. More likely, I imagine they get cut into the deal by handling the digital part as they do now, and perhaps being paid by ESPN to produce a certain amount of content for an ACC network. They have a fully built out sports production, marketing and digital arm, and I could see a situation where the SEC can leverage that to reduce startup costs.
There are some things to work out, and as everyone acknowledges, it will take a few years, but everyone should pretty much be on the same page.
