ACC Says Florida State’s Lawsuit in Florida Should Not Move Forward

The Atlantic Coast Conference filed a 141-page motion Friday to dismiss, or stay, Florida State’s suit against the league in Leon County, Fla. That follows a similar motion by FSU last week to dismiss the suit the ACC filed against the school in North Carolina, where the conference is headquartered.

The ACC is seeking to stay the case in Florida in deference to the case in Mecklenburg County, N.C., citing that the conference was the first of the two adversaries to file its claim (by 29 minutes, according to the ACC). Both of those suits were filed in December. Each side is seeking a home field advantage, so to speak. The ACC asserts that “dismissal is ultimately the right result. But because the North Carolina case has priority over this one, the only viable call for today is to stay this case pending disposition of the North Carolina case.”

The ACC is also seeking to dismiss the FSU suit—which is based on exploring a financially viable means of leaving the conference without forfeiting a massive revenue sum in media-rights fees—based on a few key points:

• The league says Florida State is “fumbling the jurisdictional ball” and “has not pleaded a legally cognizable theory for establishing that this Court [in Leon County] has personal jurisdiction over the ACC.” The conference extensively details its reasons why North Carolina should be the venue for the cases to proceed.
• The league asserts FSU is attempting to ask for an advisory opinion from the court without actually having withdrawn from the ACC. That’s not the role of the court, the league’s motion says.

The ACC filing reads, “There is no allegation that Florida State has withdrawn [to the contrary, it insists it has not], there is no allegation that it intends to withdraw, and there is no allegation that it will withdraw in the future. Rather, Florida State is improperly using this Court to air decades-old insinuations [apparently solely from an old news article] about former ACC Commissioner [John] Swofford and his son while simultaneously seeking an impermissible advisory opinion about decades-old contractual provisions that it may never invoke. The Court has no power to give it one.”

• The statute of limitations on FSU’s claims against the league has expired, the ACC says. It cites North Carolina law, which “for actions based upon a contract is three years.” The ACC’s current media-rights deals with ESPN date to 2013 and ’16.

The conference also rebutted Florida State’s contention that it did not sufficiently champion the 13–0 Seminoles football team for inclusion in the four-team College Football Playoff. Per the ACC filing:

“Florida State’s contention that the ACC could have and should have better preserved ‘the position of its undefeated football conference champion’ and maintained the ‘reputation of Florida State’s athletic programs’ is not a cognizable fiduciary obligation under the law. Indeed, Florida State points to no factual basis from which it could be reasonably inferred that somehow the ACC had a unique obligation to Florida State to maintain the reputation of its programs or its seasons, over and above the well-being or benefit of the Conference as a whole and every other member. Although the ACC is consistently promoting its members and their programs, including Florida State as the undefeated ACC champion in the 2023–24 season, the ACC has no fiduciary duty with respect to the preservation of Florida State’s college football ranking or its athletic reputation.”

Officials from both the ACC and Florida State declined to comment on this latest filing.