After short statements, deflective comments and rampant rumors, the President of Florida State University has released a comprehensive response to the buzz around the school’s potential interest in a move to the Big 12. It’s a move on FSU’s part to frame the conversation.
Eric Barron released a complete letter through Sports Illustrated for the public to realize the complete position of the university. Here’s one particular part, perhaps most important, about the monetary discrepancy between the Big 12 and ACC payouts:
Much is being made of the extra $2.9M that the Big 12 contract (which hasn’t been inked yet) gets over the ACC contract. Given that the Texas schools are expected to play each other (the Big 12 is at least as Texas centered than the ACC is North Carolina centered), the most likely scenario has FSU playing Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and West Virginia on a recurring basis and the other teams sporadically (and one more unnamed team has to join to allow the Big 12 to regain a championship game), we realize that our sports teams can no longer travel by bus to most games the estimate is that the travel by plane required by FSU to be in the Big 12 appears to exceed the $2.9M difference in the contract actually giving us fewer dollars than we have now to be competitive with the Big 12 teams, who obviously do not have to travel as far. Any renegotiated amount depends not just on FSU but the caliber of any other new team to the Big 12.
You can find the complete statement here.