The ACC Gang of Four, According to the Memo…

Saving College Sports sent a memo this week, dated October 8, to the schools, conferences, and allies that already helped push the Protect College Sports Act through the Senate. Not a press release. An internal note telling them to get the House to pass the bill untouched, and to tell four ACC schools to back off.

The letter those schools sent is what set it off. Last week, after the Senate passed the bill 77–22 on September 28, presidents and chancellors at Florida State, Clemson, Miami, and North Carolina wrote House leadership. Richard McCullough signed for FSU, alongside Jim Clements at Clemson, Joe Echevarria at Miami, and Lee Roberts at UNC. They asked for two changes: raise the power-conference cap from 20 teams to 22, and delete the rule that makes a school spend three years as an independent before it can join another league. The why is not subtle. All four are in the ACC. Those rules would make a later exit harder than the one they already negotiated.

The memo gave them a nickname, the “ACC Gang of Four,” and told its recipients to call Tallahassee, Clemson, Coral Gables, and Chapel Hill. Any change, it said, sends the bill back to the Senate and probably kills it this session.

Florida State did not sign that letter for fun. The school sued the ACC, then settled in 2025. The exit fee drops to $75 million by 2030–31, and the media rights leave with you if you pay it. The grant of rights still runs to 2036. A federal three-year timeout is a second penalty on a door the settlement already priced. The SEC and Big Ten say they are not adding schools, so the letter also asks that the fallback not get outlawed. The memo calls that selfish. Anyone who has set an ACC check next to an SEC check calls it reading the fine print.

Same story. We sued, we settled, we got a number, and we’re still the problem for asking Congress not to pile on. They keep the big check. We keep the smaller one, plus a new rule that makes the exit harder to use.