Can the grant of rights hold up?

On paper, the grant of rights is imposing, prohibiting schools from selling their own television rights as long as it’s in effect. In the hands of the right lawyers, or buried under enough money, it may only be paper-thin. No one really knows. If the few ACC schools with options are really smart, they weren’t teleconferencing with their lawyers last week to look for loopholes; they will have had that question asked and answered already.

North Carolina is certainly one of them, the one ACC school that’s unquestionably attractive to the Big Ten with its national brand and publicschool academic prestige. If both sides are smart, that’s only a matter of timing and logistics now — and who else goes along for the ride.

Duke’s basketball pedigree is probably worth something to

Fox — those two games a year alone may be worth it — but like the Bizarro Seinfeld friends, the Big Ten already has a Duke. If the North Carolina General Assembly was really on top of things, it would have acted as news broke on the final day of the legislative session to yoke N.C. State to UNC in perpetuity, taking a lesson from the way Virginia politicians shoehorned Virginia Tech into the ACC. There may still be time in January.

On the plus side, if UNC departs the ACC, the state would be off the hook for $15 million because the handout for a new ACC office was predicated on a conference with four charter members in North Carolina — in which case the South Atlantic Conference should definitely move across the border from Rock Hill and send the legislature an invoice.