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Florida AG sends strong message to legal officers in six states to support FSU in ACC lawsuit

By Andrew Hughes

An ACC Championship logo on the side of Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina Friday,
An ACC Championship logo on the side of Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina Friday, / Ken Ruinard / staff, The Greenville News
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Florida's AG, Ashley Moody, called on the top legal officers in six states to support FSU in the university's ongoing lawsuit against the ACC; one designed to release the Noles from the conference's Grant of Rights agreement, which would allow the school the chance to join another conference.

“It is because of the potential breadth and impact of the trial court’s claimed waiver of sovereign immunity that I write to each of you,” Moody wrote in the two-page letter, which was obtained by Warchant on April 22. “The potential impact of the ACC Lawsuit could subject FSU to a loss of more than a half of a billion dollars. Any waiver of sovereign immunity, especially one of such a magnitude by a state entity, should require an especially clear waiver of its sovereign immunity.”

In many ways, Moody was warning these other states what could happen if one of their top public universities was to try to escape the ACC's television agreement to air football games until the 2036 season. With the Pac-12 now defunct, the ACC is now on the bottom end of the television revenue distribution totem pole.

FSU will be the first, but certainly not the last, school that'll be looking to jump ship.

North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania possible states Florida AG reached out to about FSU vs ACC lawsuit

By process of elimination, one can decipher that North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania were likely the states Florida's AG reached out to; mainly because of the political differences between Florida and New York and Massachusetts but also because Syracuse and Boston College are perhaps the school with the lowest standing in the ACC.

North Carolina (UNC), South Carolina (Clemson), and Virginia (UVA) definitely heard from Florida's AG given the known intentions of schools from those states to flee the ACC.

As FSU's legal battle wages on against the ACC, expect more schools -- and the legal officers in the states those schools reside in -- to get involved.

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