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Cal Is Mentioned in Florida State's Lawsuit Against the ACC

Florida State is not very flattering regarding the addition of Cal and Stanford to its conference
Jake Curtis|
Cal Is Mentioned in Florida State's Lawsuit Against the ACC
Cal Is Mentioned in Florida State's Lawsuit Against the ACC

In this story:

California Golden Bears

Cal had to work to get into the Atlantic Coast Conference while Florida State is trying to work its way out of the ACC. On Friday the Florida State board of trustees voted to sue the ACC, challenging whether the ACC’s grant of rights and its $130 million withdrawal fee are legal. The suit presumably is the start of Florida State’s effort to leave the conference.

Cal is mentioned several times in the latter segment of the suit, and not in complimentary terms. You can get the gist of the suit in ESPN’s report, and you can read the entire 38-page lawsuit by clicking here.

However, we will just touch on the items that focus on Cal. (We opted not to fix the misspelling of Berkeley.)

By the way, Cal is scheduled to face Florida State in football in Tallahassee, Fla., next season, although the date has not been set. And Florida State will definitely remain in the ACC through the 2024-25 school year.

It should be noted that if Florida State wins this lawsuit and is free to leave the conference in, say, three or four years from now, Clemson is sure to follow and probably North Carolina as well.  It would leave Cal is a diminished conference.

The lawsuit has 179 numbered items, and here are the ones in which Cal is mentioned or referenced. Check out No. 112:

104. That left just four teams in the Pac-12: California Berkley (“California”), Stanford University (“Stanford”), Oregon State University (“Oregon State”) and Washington State University.
105. Both the Big 12 and the Big Ten passed on all four of those remaining Pac-12 schools. It is widely believed that both conferences (and presumably the SEC) passed on California and Stanford based on their comparative lack of Tier I football media appeal.
110. In mid-August 2023, certain ACC members and one fractional member began to extol the esoteric virtues of Cal and Stanford. “This week the realignment circus moved over to whether Stanford and Cal – two of the four lonely teams still left in the Pac-12 – should join the ACC.” Why College Football Cannot Help Itself, August 15, 2023, Jason Gay, Wall Street Journal
111. As the Wall Street Journal put it: “[c]ollege sports can’t help it. The television money’s too good, the hubris too hubris-tastic, so the hypocrisy flourishes and the wrecking ball pushes on,” though it questioned the sanity of what right-thinking conference would want its marquee teams “to play in a half-empty former Pac-12 stadium.” Id.
112. Although Stanford and Cal are excellent schools with well-deserved outstanding academic reputations, they are each lacking in the lone metric that matters in the athletic conference market today, namely, Tier I media football appeal.
113. Of the four remaining Pac-12 teams, Oregon State stood alone having finished this season ranked number 22 in the polls, while Cal was ranked number 56 and Stanford number 94 (out of a possible 133). https://theathletic.com/5110183/2023/12/04/college-football-rankingsfbs-washington-michigan/. Just as last year, this year Stanford and Cal finished in the bottom half of the Pac-12 in football standings.
114. In demonstration that the ACC had missed the point of conference realignment, in making its ‘strategic’ conference realignment move, the ACC skipped over Oregon State in favor of Cal and Stanford, a recognition the ACC did not appreciate what had driven the Power Four Conference realignment in the first instance – Tier I media value in football.
116. The additions of Cal, Stanford and SMU were made over the strenuous objections of FLORIDA STATE and other ACC member institutions. The ACC also tapped SMU, which has never been a member of a Power Five (soon to be Power Four) Conference and which the Big 12 had been passing on for years.
117. Simply stated, rather than improve its football media profile, the ACC consciously chose to diminish it, along with undermining the ACC’s “strength of schedule” potential.
118. Sports Illustrated labeled the ACC as the “Arbitrary Conglomerate of Colleges”. Dear Cal, Stanford and SMU: The ACC Makes No Sense, but Welcome!, Michael Rosenberg, Sports Illustrated, September 1, 2023 /college/2023/09/01/cal-stanford-smuacc-expansion-makes-no-sense.
120. The News & Observer described it as a “rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul Ponzi scheme that basically takes money that would have been going to Cal and Stanford and SMU and gives it to everyone one else [in the ACC is a] bill that will come due over the next 13 years, when there are more mouths scabbling at a smaller pie.” The ACC has a big Notre Dame problem, and it’s not the 28-game football losing streak, Luke Decock, The News and Observer, September 13, 2023, https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/luke-decock/article278972299.html.

Just thought I'd add this tweet from Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury-News:

Welcome to the ACC, Golden Bears

Cover photo by Jeff Faughender, Courier Journal, USA TODAY NETWORK

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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