The media contract is an agreement between ESPN and the ACC. Those are the two parties to the contract. In this contract the conference committed all of its FB and MBB content to ESPN. They receive an annual payout from ESPN that allows for $20 million per school plus a share for the conference. ESPN also agreed to sell some FB and MBB games to Raycom for $50 million per year. (As I remember it... ) ESPN agreed that at some point they would a.) launch an ACC Network or alternatively b.) pay additional money in the annual payout raising the per team share by $2 million each. This contract is kept confidential. We don't know what changes to the payout might occur if an ACC Network is created. We don't know what specific consequnces the parties may face should a team(s) leave the ACC. The payout could be altered or theoretically the contract voided.

The GoR is an agreement between the ACC and each of the member schools. The schools are not compensated for signing the GoR. The schools commit their FB and MBB content to the conference so that the conference can fulfill its obligations under the media deal, described above, with ESPN. The intention of the GoR is to retain a team's media rights in the ACC even if that school leaves the conference. The defecting school would arrive in its new conference with no FB or MBB media rights.

Lawyers on message boards have endless variations of the outcome of a team defection. I have even seen opinions that there would be no damages paid at all, because previous conference realignment moves have not caused the jilted conference to suffer a financial loss. And Mizzoufan, I've seen many lawyers write that the conference could not continue to use the departed teams content without compensating them. (How much?...) I think that the confidential media contract may contain the language that could deter a school from departing the mothership.

Does it occur to anyone else that the ACC GoR is inherently more secure than the Big12 GoR because the Big12 schools retain Tier 3 rights?