Why is the ACC TV contract so bad? (Updated)

Lou, a solid FSU fan with great insight sums it up well.

In addition to Lou's points, I believe the ACC was also one of the few, if not only, to basically:

*Give away tier 3 rights.
*Give away the conference championship game.
*ACC also got murdered in major bowl payout negotiations.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-895378-page-3.html

I'll put in my two cents...Swofford is number one to blame, as head of the organization, but there is blood on everyone's hands, including FSU and Clemson.

Some things were bad timing...ACC football being pathetic, the economy, etc. But it's not like the ACC being pathetic was just bad luck. It was pathetic for decades. I'm not going to do it again, but I went back and tracked by decade, and the ACC was by far the worst every decade in landing top 10 final poll teams. Several decades, behind conferences that don't even exist any more, like the Big East or Southwest. People would always say "it's cyclical", but it wasn't cyclical...the ACC was the flat line worst for DECADES until the 2010s. So basically, they deephasized football for decades UNTIL they signed that deal.

We've seen the ACC have a solid performance in the last ten years (last year notwithstanding), in large part simply by making the commitment. The scales didn't fall of their eyes until the realignment crisis, and the dangling of the ACC Network, and all of a sudden ACC schools start realizing that football matters. Commitment gets results. If they'd done that in 2000 instead of 2010, we'd be in a totally different situation.

And I don't necessarily blame them for not having the insight in 1983 or something, when basketball was the big financial driver...but by the late 1990s is was plainly obvious to everyone but the ACC that football was the financial future. You would think that watching the arguably greatest basketball conference, the Big East, progressively fall apart over the inability to field a coherent football product would have made it perfectly clear that basketball wasn't going to save anybody, but that shouldn't even have been necessary.

All that being said, even if you're as blind to the changing financial landscape as the ACC was, the deal was STILL worse than it had to be. Even if they hadn't seen the football light until late in the game, they could have signed a shorter contract, pieced it out among suitors, and not set aside for Raycom.

All you have to do is look at the fact that the ACC was the ONLY conference that decided that:
1. ALL content should be sold to one network
2. Games MUST continue to be sold to a syndicator
No other conference thought that was a good move, and it actually went opposite the trend of everyone else.

So not only did you let your product deteriorate and stagnate even knowing a contract would be on the horizon, you then sold that product in a disadvantageous way. Swofford has to own that first and foremost, but it's not like one man made it happen against the wishes of the programs. The programs all own that by being complicit, ignorant, or simply deferring without thought. Swofford isn't a king or a mega genius, and the schools should not have acted (not acted) like he was.