Miami Athletic Director Backs ACC, Despite Florida State and Clemson Lawsuit
While Florida State and Clemson are exploring legal opportunities to leave the ACC, don’t count Miami as another ACC program looking to bail on their conference. At least not yet.
Athletic director Dan Radakovich joined 560Sports WQAM on Thursday and said, “We are incredibly solid with the ACC, it’s a great conference and provides great structure an certainly access to the College Football Playoff. We look at our circumstance here with a very orange and green set of glasses and ask are we in. a good spot and growing our football program. We’ve invested in it. We’ve brought Mario (Cristobal) here and he’s establishing an incredible foundation. What’s the opportunity for us here, with things under our control to move this thing forward? The ACC is still one the Power Four conference that’s a part of the College Football Playoff.”
Rdakovich added, “We’re very proud to be a part of that. We’re a leading brand within the ACC and we’re going to continue to be a part of it.”
Clemson sued the Atlantic Coast Conference in a South Carolina court on Tuesday, joining Florida State in challenging the league’s right to charge schools hundreds of millions of dollars to leave. The complaint filed in Pickens County says the ACC’s “exorbitant $140 million” exit penalty and the grant of rights used to bind schools to a conference through their media rights should be struck down.
The Big Ten and SEC are millions of dollars per team annually ahead of the ACC and Big 12 in revenues, a number that’s going to continue to increase with College Football Playoff expansion.
“Those dollar differentials aren’t going to change the path of how we’re going to move forward as an organization,” Radakovich said. “We’re a program that’s moving forward. As a university, we’re moving forward and on the rise, both academically and other areas.”
The Big 12 is indisputably in a better spot than the ACC, with a shorter-term contract worth more money on a per school annual basis. We know that Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark is carefully watching to see what happens with the ACC schools, with Florida State, Clemson and Miami at the top of the pecking order.
So now, we wait and see to see how the legal process plays out. And we’ll see how strong these words remain from the Miami AD.
