(12-26-2023 06:26 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(12-26-2023 05:07 PM)YNot Wrote:  

(12-26-2023 04:54 PM)Skyhawk Wrote:  

(12-26-2023 04:08 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  

(12-26-2023 02:44 PM)Gitanole Wrote:  That would not be the 'sole' reason in this case.

I've read FSU's legal complaint in its entirety. I'm not a lawyer but it's easy to see that the whole thing basically boils down to "We want to leave the ACC because its members are being paid less than Big 10 and SEC members, which is the ACC's fault because it has mismanaged media rights negotiations and membership additions, and we should be allowed to leave without penalty because the ACC's exit fees and GOR terms are unreasonably harsh."

The complaint conveniently fails to address the reality that Big 10 and SEC members are being paid more than ACC members primarily because the marketplace has determined that Big 10 and SEC media rights are worth significantly more than ACC media rights.

Moreover, to the extent that the payout differential is in fact due ACC mismanagement of media rights negotiations, the complaint attempts to absolve FSU of any responsibility for this mismanagement. It does so by claiming that, although FSU approved the ACC's agreements with ESPN, it only did so because ACC officials lied to FSU and other member schools about ESPN's negotiating position. However it cites no evidence to support this claim.

Finally, the complaint doesn't acknowledge that the ACC's exit fees, GOR terms, and membership additions were either approved by FSU directly or were approved by a supermajority of ACC members in accordance with by-laws that FSU agreed to subject itself to by joining the the ACC.

In my admittedly layman's opinion most of the arguments in the complaint are paper-thin, and when all of the excuses and obfuscations are peeled away, what's left is a bald assertion that FSU should be allowed to disentangle itself from its prior commitments and walk away from the ACC scot-free because those commitments are preventing it from making a lot more money.

I wonder.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think we have more than a few wandering around here.

Did FSU:

sell or
license or
lend or
cede

their media rights?

Or something else?

In other words, what - legally - does "grant" mean?

Some synonyms to consider: transfer, give, confer

But, that's not the main issue. FSU isn't contending whether they granted their rights to the ACC. The primary legal issues are whether that grant was unfairly induced and whether the penalty for breaking that grant is too high and unreasonable.

The buzz words are:

- whether the grant and the penalty for going against that grant were 'unfair' or 'unconscionable' - think unjust, unreasonable.

- whether the ACC made 'misrepresentations' to obtain FSU's grant of rights - think false, misleading, deceive...

And what fans aren’t fully internalizing (or don’t want to fully internalize) is that those theories are INSANELY hard to prove and for good reason. Courts simply don’t like throwing out contracts at all - that’s the default position from day one in Contracts law in law school.

As I keep saying, the most amazing thing is that FSU isn’t challenging a single thing about the terms of the GOR itself. They aren’t even trying to argue that the ESPN early termination option allows FSU to get out of the GOR early and/or have lower damages (even though it’s brought up every 10 minutes on this forum). I emphasize again: FSU is straight up admitting in the complaint that the GOR terms do exactly what they’re intended to do (lock a school’s rights in until 2036) and are trying to get an outside force to invalidate it. That is REALLY hard to prove (and it’s supposed to be REALLY hard to prove, especially when every signatory is a sophisticated business entity with their own lawyers).