The Florida State football program is in an interesting situation as the school is seemingly looking to leave the ACC, despite the grant of rights binding each of the members through 2036. With that, some have speculated that Florida State and its football program could go independent, and athletic director Michael Alford shut that idea down.
“I don’ think it’s an option because of scheduling and everything that comes along with that, and where media contracts are now,” Michael Alford said, via Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic. “But I’m not going to lie to you and say I didn’t spend 10 minutes on it. … I have a great staff that knows that I want to look at things and know what all my options are but also have analytics and not just throw something up there. It need to have some support behind it so we can look at it. … Is that a true option? No, it’s not a true option.”
Florida State was one of the schools that voted against the ACC adding Stanford, Cal and SMU recently, and with the movement in the Big Ten, SEC and Big 12 in recent years, Alford will surely want to get the school and specifically the football program into a conference that provides long-term security.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Florida State over the next few years, and if the ACC schools who do not want to stay are able to do anything regarding the grant of rights seemingly keeping the schools locked in.