Florida State has long seemed out of place in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
A football school in a league with a rich history of basketball success.
The Seminoles want out. Divorce is unavoidable, but the divorce appears to be everything but peaceful.
The salvos fired Friday, when the Florida State board of trustees agreed to initiate legal proceedings to leave the ACC without having to pay a hefty departure fee, demonstrated how heated this conflict is going to get.
Not surprising, since the stakes are enormous for both sides.
The ACC is vowing to hold Florida State to its end of the bargain over television rights, which would force the Seminoles to come up with a staggering pile of cash — the school’s legal counsel put the figure at $572 million — just to head for the exit ramp.
But if the Seminoles do find a more realistic pathway, perhaps through a sympathetic court ruling, it could send the ACC tumbling into the same death spiral that quickly erased the storied Pac-12
from the major college landscape
Clemson and North Carolina could quickly follow Florida State’s lead, especially since they joined the Seminoles in voting against the ACC taking in Pac-12 refugees Stanford and California — way out on the Pacific coast — along with Dallas-based SMU for no apparent reason other than providing a convenient spot to meet up with the faraway newcomer
The last straw to a relationship that has been rocky for years, it would seem, was Florida State being left out of the four-team College Football Playoff — the first time a major conference champion with a perfect 13-0 record has been snubbed.
The school said that was not a direct factor, but it certainly didn’t help smooth things over.
“It is becoming painfully apparent that Florida State’s athletic ambitions and institutional priorities are no longer served by the ACC’s leadership,” university President Richard McCullough said
