Latest / The Jake Wimberly Podcast / David Glenn on the State of the ACC and College Football

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David Glenn on the State of the ACC and College Football · The Jake Wimberly Podcast

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  David Glenn of The David Glenn Show, largest North Carolina sports talk show,
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  and of course all over the ACC, college sports, and more on your
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  radio. David, thank you so much for taking some time, sir.
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  How are you. I'm doing great, Jake, good to be with you
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  again. Hey, appreciate you joining us. All Right, I'm going to
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  work my way inside the ACC in the back out and I do want to
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  hit a basketball. Two question be for we get out on the ACC.
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  Florida State Matt Baker reported earlier today Florida State Board of Trustees meeting to discuss
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  a potential internal bank loan to athletics for quote potential non capital strategic initiatives.
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  It seems like every time you wake up there's something different with Florida State wanting
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  out of the league, NCAA, probation bank loans, this ACC, Florida
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  State marriage. I just don't know. Is there any way that this is
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  going to work. Well, they're going to get a divorce. It's just
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  a matter of time and for how much money. And the bottom line is
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  that this is a precarious position for the ACC, which is seventy one years
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  old and it has survived the departure of other members. But in this particular
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  case, Florida State is the biggest and best football brand that the ACC has,
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  I mean, and part of that is just more people watch Seminoles games
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  than watch, on average, the games of any other ACC member. And
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  we all know that football is the tail wagging the dog these days, and
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  football TV money is what keeps these athletic departments wealthy. Men's basketball a long
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  time ago was fifty percent of the money by some estimates. Now men's basketball
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  is only nineteen or twenty percent of the money and football is in that eighty
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  percent neighborhood. So the bottom line is Florida State would love to leave for
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  zero money, no exit fee, no grant of rights, media loss,
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  And as Florida State's own attorneys have outlined, the maximum that they would have
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  to lose or pay is five hundred and seventy two million dollars. So I
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  don't think either of those extremes is going to be the final product as this
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  plays out over a period, you know, a period of multiple years in
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  the courts. But obviously if FSU leaves for one hundred million, that would
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  invite others to try to leave. But if the FSU was forced to pay
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  or lose four hundred million. I think others would hesitate to leave for that.
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  That's severe of a fee. So it's in front of the judges.
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  There's dueling lawsuits, it's there's two different states involved in those lawsuits. There's
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  so there's jurisdiction battles and a whole bunch of other things that I will not
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  bore your listeners with even though I've practiced it. I've been an attorney here
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  in North Carolina since nineteen ninety four. That has helped me more in my
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  sports media career than I ever thought it would. And that's the case with
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  this Florida State a sc dueling lawsuit situation. David Glenn on your radio,
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  make sure to follo him on Exit David Glenn's Show. That's David Glenn's Show.
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  Check them out online at David Glennshow dot com. Yeah, you know,
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  David, this is interesting to me because when you look at the league
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  and I want to get your their thought on the Football League, I mean
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  Floria's Obviously we know about the undefeated season getting snubbed if you look at it
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  on that side or not by the n C double or askuing me by the
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  College Football Playoff Committee. But you look at the year Florida State had,
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  You look at Louisville in the year that they had a ten win team,
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  n C State again quietly with a nine win team, you know, Clemson
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  nine wins. You know, where is that program under Dabos Sweeney? Is
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  it kind of an idle? You look at Duke Manny Diz comes into the
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  program north or into that program in North Carolina. I mean, it's a
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  very competitive, competitive league. So and I know it's all about money for
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  Florida State, but you got SMU now that will play football there, Stanford
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  will play football there. Competitive wise, I mean it's it's you know,
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  outside of the SEC and the Big ten. I mean, it's it's right
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  there at number three. Yeah, it is a solid league. And you
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  know, people forget that Florida State finished in the top ten and Clemson,
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  NC State in Louisville all finished in the top twenty five. And as you
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  mentioned, it was the rare down year for the Clumpson Tigers. I personally
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  think they're going to bounce back and they've certainly been one of the most success
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  for college football teams in the country. For the last decade or so,
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  including two national championships under Dabos Sweeney. Then at one point, what was
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  its seven or eight straight ACC football championships for the Clemson Tigers. So there's
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  certainly quality at the top, there's some depth, but really the bottom line,
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  Jake, goes back to the money that you mentioned, And one big
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  difference here in ACC country is that not as many people on average watch ACC
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  football compared to the number of people who watch Big ten football or SEC football.
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  Now you're right in the middle of SEC country. You could probably teach
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  a class on SEC football. They not only win the most national championships and
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  other accolades, but they also have intensely passionate fan bases that watch in huge
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  numbers, sometimes even when their favorite team is not all that great. And
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  in the Atlantic Coast Conference, yes, Florida State fans tend to watch in
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  huge numbers, Clemson fans tend to watch in huge numbers. But putting aside
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  the wins and losses, most of the other fan bases in the ACC do
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  not watch football in as huge numbers as you see. For a larger number
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  of Big ten programs and a larger number of SEC programs. So what happens
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  is when these commissioners sit down with their TV partners. Believe it or not,
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  wins and losses are a smaller part of the conversation. The bigger part
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  of the conversation is what is the last year shown? What are the last
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  five years shown? What are the last ten years shown? When it comes
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  to how many SEC fans are watching football and how many ADC fans are watching
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  football? Not just for the best teams, but you know, these TV
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  partners are paying for the whole package, so they want to know from A
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  to Z who's watching a lot of football. And back in the day,
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  even twenty years ago, jake basketball men's basketball money was roughly the equivalent for
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  some leagues as the football TV money. Well, those days are over,
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  and the ACC is more famous for men's basketball, it is less famous for
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  football. A lot of these schools fan bases are more into basketball than they
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  are into football. And remember, unlike the SEC and the Big Ten,
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  the ACC has a bunch of smaller private universities whose alumni bases are simply not
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  as large. And that's another thing that depresses the TV eyeballs. The funniest,
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  weirdest most ridiculous aspect of the Florida State lawsuit is that they're accusing the
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  a SEC commissioners of not negotiating not negotiating TV deals that are as good as
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  the TV deals of the SEC and the Big Ten, and they're leaving out
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  the most obvious fact that they're leaving it out on purpose because they know it
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  makes their argument look bad. The SEC and the Big Ten commissioners are essentially
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  negotiating with aces and kings and queens in their hands. Why Because not only
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  do their teams win a lot in football, their fans watch way more football
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  than ACC fans do on average over a many year period. That's the John
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  Swapford, former ACC Commissioner and the current ACC commissioner. Yeah, they have
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  that third or fourth best in some years football product, but they also have
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  the third or fourth best TV eyeball number. And when you're negotiating from that
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  position, obviously you have much less leverage to demand bigger dollars, whether your
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  partner is ESPN, CBS, or anybody else. David Glenn talking ACC Sports
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  and of course NCAA Sports. David Glenn Show in the Great State of North
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  Carolina WINSI Edition of the program, David. That takes me to Capitol Hill
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  tomorrow where Charlie Baker and Power five commissioners will meet in DC and discuss this
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  project d one, this subcommittee or is this subconference that Baker wants people to
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  jump into. But then you look at the SEC particularly and the Big ten,
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  they said no, a lot of people saying, hey, this will
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  run out of time. This could be where the split happens. What do
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  you think ultimately happens? And I'm asking you to, you know, look
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  into a crystal ball here, But yeah, logistically, I mean, this
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  is fascinating that we're kind of you know, everybody says, what's going on
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  with NIO, what's going to happen with transfer portal? We may know a
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  lot this week. It's fascinating and it is hard to predict. The funny
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  part about is that the NC double A has told Congress for basically one hundred
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  years in a row, please stay out of our business. We don't want
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  you sticking your nose where it doesn't belong. This is the exact one hundred
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  and eighty degree reversal of that. The NC double A is essentially going to
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  Congress and saying tell us what the rules should be. Because if Congress were
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  to give the nc double A some kind of an anti trust exemption, well
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  then whatever Congress says the new rules are going to be, the nc double
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  A can just you know, wave its hands and say that's what Congress decided
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  the future of college sports was going to look like. Don't sue us anymore.
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  I don't think that's going to happen. It's where this is going is
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  complicated, and I believe one probable solution is that at some point, whether
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  they call it a union or not, there's going to have to be negotiations
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  between universities and somebody representing athletes because the NCUBA keeps getting sued and keeps losing
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  every time they try to limit something, whether it's transfers or assistant coaches.
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  Back in the day, they lost a lawsuit because they tried to limit the
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  compensation of an extra assistant coach. They got sued there and they lost.
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  They've gotten sued over video games and lost. I mean, you know,
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  for any fans of the Harlem Globe Trotters, you know their opponent, the
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  Washington Generals, is the team that's basically paid to lose. The nc DOUBLEA
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  has about the same winning percentage in lawsuits that the Washington Generals have against the
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  Harlem Globetrotters. And the NCUBA knows that it's in a position of weakness,
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  and that's why they're begging Congress to create this new world for amateur athletics.
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  It is going to be really hard to get Congress degree on one system.
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  It's going to be really hard to get all these large schools and conferences degree
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  to agree on a single system. People can forget. One of the reasons
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  we didn't get the twelve team playoff a couple of years earlier when we could
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  have it was because the people at the table couldn't decide how to divide the
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  money. And man, you got this new world of college athletics, you're
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  gonna have TV executives at the table, You're gonna have the begging for Congress
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  to intervene. But at some point, I believe there's going to have to
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  be a miniature version of what we have in professional sports. And the bottom
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  line in pro sports that people forget sometimes is an NBA draft or an NFL
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  draft would be absolutely illegal against all sorts of laws unless those leagues negotiated with
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  those players associations, and both sides are represented by attorneys, and the players
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  association said, okay, we'll accept draft, but we want these other you
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  know, we want these mega million dollar contracts for our players and slotted draft
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  picks and all that stuff. At some point, that kind of negotiation,
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  collective bargaining they call it, is going to be a part of college sports.
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  And that could evolve either with the current version of the NCAA, or
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  it could evolve with that example that you're mentioning, where you know, sixty
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  schools or some number break away from everybody else and just do it their own
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  way. Make sure to find him on exit David Glenn Show. Of course,
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  check out to show David Glennshow dot com. David, I appreciate your
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  time. Next time, we'll get you on pretty soon, we'll talk some
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  NCAA basketball as the league up there looks like it's really in a good position
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  this year. I appreciate your time and insight as always, sir, Thank
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  you, Jack. Always going to be with