Stolen from another site:

The following is a summary of the
FSU Board of Trustees meeting.

FSU's Legal Arguments

The ACC's Agreements and extensions of the agreements are in violation of the State of Florida's Anti-Trust laws.

The ACC's penalties via the Grant of Rights buyout and the conference Severe Penalty (payment to leave the conference) are unenforceable as they are excessive and do not accurately reflect the damages the conference would incur if a member school left. If found to be unenforceable, a court would not adjust the penalty amount, instead the penalties would be nullified completely.

The ACC is in breach contract to protect and improve their member's financial interests. The following highlights were made:

The ACC has failed to appropriately give FSU the value of their atheletic program media rights and has since further diluted that value with the addition of 3 additional members

The ACC amended the 2016 Tier 1 media agreement without the approval of 2/3rds of the conference's Athletic Directors as required by ACC bylaws

The ACC leadership without AD approval extended the unilateral ESPN 9-year option for Tier 1 media rights from 2016 without any financial considerations, allowing ESPN to wait to execute an extension of media rights until 2025 when it should have occurred as agreed upon in 2024.

The ACC agreed to a previously unheard of 20-year period of media rights for its conference members

The ACC breached it's fiduciary duties the conference has to its members

A generic Fundamental Failure of Frustration of Contractual Purpose. As explained by the lawyer, the whole purpose of the ACC is to look out for its member's interests and maximize value for them and it has failed to do so.

Last count is Violation of Public Policy. As explained, it is not consistent with public policy to impose the penalties and contracts that the conference has on the school.

Noteworthy Comments

It was stressed numerous times that this is not a reaction to FSU being left out of the "CFP Invitational" (as said by FSU's President) and that this process has been in play for over a year and a half.

FSU's leadership made it clear this was a failure of "Prior ACC leadership"

This meeting confirmed numerous times that the Grant of Rights and other ACC Binding Contracts are under protection at the ACC League Offices and that no photos or verbatim copies are allowed to be made

As for Argument 2 of unenforceable penalties, ESPN's contract with the ACC says that payouts will not change so long as the conference has 15 or more members. With the recent addition of 3 members, were FSU to leave then ESPN's payouts per the contract would remain the same as the conference continues to have more than 15 members. Therefore, the penalties laid out by the conference are excessive.

An FSU BoT member who is a trial lawyer coyly pointed out that internet copies of the Grant of Rights may or may not be correct and since lawyers are unable to compare them that they can not be used in trial. Therefore, if this was taken to court a "true, accurate, and correct copy of the document that would have original signatures on it, preferably in blue ink so that you know they are original." This seems to imply that part of FSU's play is to get the Grant of Rights publicly available and out of the ACC's closed off protection.

The FSU Board of Trustee's approved the lawsuit against the ACC which would be filed later today and start the legal process following Christmas. The law firm hired by FSU feels its reasonable to believe other schools would "join in the conversation" with the ACC regarding these claims made.

This is considered an "ACC vs FSU" lawsuit. It passed unanimously without any objection from any BoT member.

This post was edited on 12/22/23 at 11:09 am