Report: FSU is likely to begin the process of leaving the ACC after being snubbed from the college football playoffs.
Reports say that the Florida State University Board in Trustees has set a virtual meeting for 10 a.m. ET on Friday.
There are no shocks here; Florida State will keep thinking about their place inside the ACC and trying to find ways to leave the league for better things.
Because FSU was already unhappy regarding the league, the Seminoles felt even more sure after being kicked out of the College Football Playoff.
Because they were 13-0 and unbeaten in the ACC and still didn’t make the playoffs, these wins didn’t help.
No one knows what will happen next, but news like this does make people talk. We looked at how people on social media felt about the news about Florida State.
It was a first for the College Football Playoff Selection Committee in leaving out undefeated Florida State, the 2023 ACC champion. This decision was met with instant and fair criticism.
The Seminoles went on a 13-0 run that included a three-touchdown win over LSU and went through the ACC regular season without a loss.
Only quarterback Jordan Travis’s terrible injury put them to the test, but the run showed that they were a real contender that could win by the smallest of margins.
No. 1 Michigan and No. 2 Washington are also unbeaten power conference winners and are still very much in the running.
The head-to-head matchup between No. 3 Texas and No. 4 Alabama is over since both teams have only lost one game.
In the end, Alabama’s win over No. 1 Georgia in the SEC Championship Game proved enough to get them ahead of the perfect Seminoles, but not of the team that had beat them only once all season.
Michael Alford, the athletic director for the Seminoles, said that FSU’s lack of recognition was “unforgivable” and a “unwarranted injustice” to the school.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said it was “unfathomable” that the league’s perfect winner was left out. FSU will now play in the New Year’s Six.
When Jordan Travis and Tate Rodemaker got hurt, it was clear that the team’s offensive potential was restricted.
To win the ACC title game against Louisville, the Noles only gained 219 yards. The game in Florida wasn’t much better either.
It still found ways to win those games. The group made it clear that when they decide how to rank teams, they look at all of their work.
Anyone who wants to connect Travis’s departure with this team should do so in a way that shows what’s great regarding this year’s Seminoles: they want to win games against better teams and can do so by playing great defense.
In the meantime, Alabama beat USF in a close game and used a miraculous fourth-and-31 play to beat Auburn, which had just lost at home to League USA runner-up New Mexico State.
There is also a simple question that needs to be asked: did the games really matter for FSU in the end? The Seminoles did everything that was expected of them while playing in what many sports fans call a “power conference.” They even overcame problems that might have defeated other teams.
This offseason, Texas joined the SEC and Washington joined the Big Ten. This has made people worry that the choice to pass over FSU shows that the new “big two” conferences are more important than the rest of the conferences.
On Sunday, NC State AD and chair of the CFP committee Boo Corrigan was asked if leaving out an undefeated league champion would set a bad example. What he said wasn’t very interesting.
“When you think about the disparities that will be going on in scheduling and everything that the happens with those clubs when they leave into a new conference… I feel horrible for Coach Mik Norvell then and the players,” Corrigan stated.
To leave the league, you can’t just pay the $120 million buyout and call the SEC and Big Ten. Sources in the business world say that legal challenges as well as additional payments over the course of the deal could add up to almost $500 million. This makes it almost impossible for colleges, even the most wealthy ones, to cut ties.
In May, the ACC tried to make league members happy with a new way to split income that will start in 2024–25 and reward success based on how well a team does in the playoffs.
The ACC hasn’t said how the rewards are decided, but most people think that teams that make the CFP will get payouts of several million dollars.