Narduzzi says Pitt unbothered by Clemson, FSU lawsuits against ACC

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Pitt has at least one thing in common with Clemson and Florida State.

At ACC Kickoff at the Hilton in Uptown Charlotte last week, you could see it in what Pat Narduzzi was wearing on one of his fingers: a conference championship ring.

Since 2011, Clemson has won eight ACC football titles, Florida State has captured four, and Pitt has one. No other ACC program has won the conference title in that time, and only three others – Wake Forest, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech – won it before then (the game began in 2005). And the only active head coaches in the conference with ACC championships are Dabo Swinney, Mike Norvell and Pat Narduzzi.

And that’s about where the similarities between the three football programs end.

The Panthers, unlike the Tigers and the Seminoles, aren’t suing the conference in courts in South Carolina and Florida to try and find a way to break the grant-of-rights and get out of the league. Florida State sued the ACC back in December and Clemson brought forth litigation in March. The ACC responded to both schools with countersuits.

Speaking to a crowded room of reporters, conference staff and supporters last week, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips called the lawsuits, “damaging, disruptive and incredibly harmful to the league.” But he also vowed that the ACC will not roll over for Clemson and Florida State, saying, “We will fight to protect the ACC and our members for as long as it takes.”

In short, the end to this ongoing litigation is not near.

But Narduzzi says those lawsuits haven’t impacted his program all that much. The Panthers’ focus is on the field – not what’s happening in courtrooms in the south.

“I feel bad for the commissioner. He’s got a hard job. He’s a tremendous ambassador for the Atlantic Coast Conference,” Narduzzi said. “It’s probably been distracting for him, but not distracting for me.”

On recent Zoom calls between ACC football coaches, Narduzzi said that Swinney and Norvell “act like everything is the same.”

“I don’t sit in that commissioner’s office, so he can call it the way he wants to call it. I don’t see any distractions on my end. I don’t think the coaches see it as a distraction,” Narduzzi added. “We’re playing football. Season’s opening up in a month, and I’m fired up.”

At the root of Clemson and Florida State’s displeasure with the ACC is the feeling that they are falling behind programs in the SEC and Big Ten in an arms race for resources that is driven by TV revenue from the contracts those two conferences negotiated with big networks. In the 2022-23 season, while ACC member schools made about $44.8 million each in TV revenue, SEC schools made about $51.3 million, while Big Ten members got $60.3 million.

Clemson and Florida State can’t just up-and-leave for a new conference because both schools signed and agreed to – twice – an imposing grant-of-rights that gives the ACC control of their media rights for the duration of a TV deal with ESPN that runs through 2036. While that deal gives ACC programs stability – so the league doesn’t implode during an ever-changing media landscape like the Pac-12 did – it also puts them in third place by a sizable margin in terms of the money that its schools are bringing in.

With the grant-of-rights in place, even if Florida State and Clemson pony-up the nine-figure exit fee to leave the ACC, they wouldn’t be able to profit from their media rights because the ACC would still own it.

And so, this is why the three parties are in court. Clemson and Florida State are searching for a loophole and the ACC is attempting to stand its ground and keep the league intact.

“Either you believe in what has been signed or you don’t. We are going to do everything we can to protect and to for fight the league,” Phillips said. “This conference is bigger than any one school, or schools.”

This year, the ACC has three new members in Stanford, SMU and Cal, bringing the conference to 17 football-playing members (Notre Dame is a member in all other sports). Pitt voted for the ACC to expand last fall, while Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina voted against adding new members.

So now, the ACC – which when it was formed in 1953 had a footprint that encompassed an area from just Columbia, South Carolina to College Park, Maryland – now stretches as far south as Miami, as far north as Boston, as far west as California’s Bay Area, and also includes Dallas, Texas.

For Narduzzi, that’s just a sign of the times.

“It’s college football. It’s no different than a nonconference game,” Narduzzi said. “You know, people talk about the expense to travel – whether it be the soccer team or baseball team, volleyball team – but what they don’t look at is the wear and tear. When you go on a long flight… how you feel when you land, okay, try to take that flight and play a football game at the highest level… I feel bad for their players.”