Florida State Board of Trustees Chairman blasted ACC.

[BUGGZY]

But 15 is a VERY LONG deal. And we signed it in a collectively historic slump.

let's look at the facts. we signed a 12 year deal in the midst of a historic slump which also happened to be during a major recession in the US economy and the year before ANYONE else was renewing long term rights deals.

THAT was the bad deal.

unfortunately, we were stuck with it. the 15 year deal you keep mentioning is actually a renegotiation of another deal only ONE YEAR into said deal. even an arbitrator might be slightly annoyed if a party forced a renegotiation to his table only ONE YEAR into a 12 year deal.

we just took a $155MM/year deal we were legally committed to for 12 years and turned it into a $240MM/year deal afte ONE YEAR of the 12 year deal.

i'm not trying to make Swofford into a hero or anything like that, but let's not act like he simply extended the same $155MM deal or only got us up to $180MM/year or something like that. he took his own really bad 12 year deal (which most in the industry thought was a coup when he signed it considering the market he had to work with) and turned it into a pretty decent 15 year deal.

you have to give ESPN something in return for a $85MM/year increase in rights fees ONE YEAR into a 12 year deal, and what we gave them was 4 more years.