CLEMSON — When Clemson and Florida State settled their lawsuits with the Atlantic Coast Conference back on March 4, Commissioner Jim Phillips said the settlements allowed the league to focus on its future while being united as an 18-member conference.

How united is the ACC?

How long will it remain an 18-team conference?

Better yet, will it even be a conference in the next five years?

Last Thursday, when Clemson and Florida State revealed what was inside their settlements, it became obvious that the future of the ACC is still in limbo.

When Clemson filed its lawsuit in March of 2024, Clemson’s number one objective was to put itself in better position should the opportunity to leave the ACC ever came to the forefront.

Prior to the lawsuits and the subsequent settlements, no other conference was willing to negotiate with an ACC school. The exit fee was ridiculously high, and even if they could pay the exit fee, the exiting school would not have exclusive access to their media rights.

No conference in the world was going to touch them.

However, Clemson and Florida State put enough heat on the ACC, the possibility of any league member leaving the conference is more realistic than ever before.

It was revealed in Clemson’s settlement, the new exit fee for a member institution to leave the ACC will cost $165 million for 2025-’26, but it will drop $18 million annually every year through the 2029-’30 academic year.

Starting in the 3030-’31 academic year, it drops to $75 million for the duration of the contract, which expires in 2036.

When news of the settlement broke this past March, a lot of people thought a lower exit fee and a less stringent Grant of Rights would at least keep the ACC together through 2029-’30.

But Clemson’s settlement with the ACC revealed that each school will have exclusive access to its media rights upon departure from the conference, which is the biggest reveal of anything in the settlement.

I can only imagine what the executives at FOX Sports were thinking after reading Clemson’s settlement.

FOX Sports has flirted with the idea of anchoring itself in the South Region of the United State for a while. However, ESPN, thanks to its relationships with the SEC and ACC, has always controlled college football’s largest market.

No one loves or watches college football more than the Southeast United States, and now that a window to ACC teams has opened, teams like Clemson, Florida State, Miami and North Carolina become very attractive to FOX Sports, who is the major television provider for the Big Ten.

Granted, this is all speculative, of course, but you are crazy if you do not believe that the Big Ten and FOX Sports want to get their brands running through the Southeast’s footprint.

If the Big Ten is lurking and is wanting to take some teams away from the ACC, I’ll bet you that the SEC will try to counter. And it’s not because the SEC wants to get bigger. We know they do not.

The SEC’s interest in the ACC schools that I mentioned above will be strictly based on keeping the Big Ten out of the Southeast.

Let’s just agree. This is something to pay attention to.