Well, the college football world appears to be back at it, and fans couldn’t help but react in the best way they know: jokes.
Florida State called an emergency board of trustees meeting on Friday morning reportedly to discuss possible steps toward exiting the ACC, which would include challenging the conference’s grant of rights. The grant of rights, as The Athletic noted, is a “legally binding document that controls the publicity rights of a conference’s member schools and extends throughout the length of the ACC’s media rights deal with ESPN, which runs through 2036.”
After so much conference realignment news recently with teams all over the country swapping conferences, it seems we’re back at it again. And it’s not a huge surprise, especially after Florida State was left out of the four-team College Football Playoff, despite being an undefeated Power Five champion.
As ESPN reported, should Florida State opt to challenge the conference’s grant of rights, an ACC departure would be far from instantaneous and likely would involve significant legal battles.
But should that happen, where would Florida State go? Do other conferences want another member? Would a conference accepting another member come with modified revenue sharing? Would it just end up as an independent? How would it impact sports beyond football? Maybe the emergency board of trustees meeting was just a chance for people to vent and be angry?
There are a lot of questions, and many won’t be answered for a while. So college football fans reacted to the Florida State news Friday with lots of jokes: