During the college football off-season, around this time of year, talk of expansion begins. Since the Florida State Seminoles didn’t make the College Football Playoff, they have threatened to leave the ACC.
The question is, where would they go? Rumors were that they were looking at the Big Ten and the SEC, and the SEC was the most likely landing spot.
Surprisingly, one school that may back the Seminoles coming into the league is their rival, the Florida Gators. Florida Athletic Director Scott Stricklin was all for FSU joining the league, primarily if it benefits the conference.
“We have a good relationship w/our friends in Tallahassee,” he said. No school has a veto in this league. If you get ¾ of the league to support expansion, we’re going to expand. Anybody who made our league better, we’d be supportive of joining the SEC. “Whenever we’ve expanded in the past, the leadership of league was able to lay out this is why it makes sense to bring in Arkansas & South Carolina; A&M & Missouri, why Texas & OU make sense. We all saw financial projections, and competitive rational & ¾ of the league said ‘let’s do this.’
“If there were ever opportunities out there – & again, no one has had any conversations – that is the scenario where somebody walks in & says ‘here’s a school, here’s what they bring to the table, here’s how it makes us all better.’ We would be supportive of that,” he said.
The bottom line is that, in the end, money trumps any school rivalries.