Syracuse Orange: If Florida State bolts ACC, other power leagues may not be interested

As the Syracuse Orange and its Atlantic Coast Conference peers get set for the upcoming 2024-25 season across various fall sports, conference realignment chatter continues to be the norm.

Ahead of 2024-25, the country's top two leagues, the Big Ten Conference and the Southeastern Conference, have gotten even stronger with big additions. At the same time, other power leagues, including the ACC and the Big 12 Conference, have expanded their memberships as well.

The ACC, for 2024-25, has added three schools from the West Coast in California, Stanford and SMU. ACC officials are contending with legal battles involving two of the conference's top programs, Clemson and Florida State.

ACC members are joined together with the conference and broadcast partner ESPN until the ACC’s grant of rights deal expires in 2036, although it's possible that Clemson, FSU or others could depart the conference at some point, based on the outcome of these legal fights, exit fees and the like.

Naturally, much of this stuff boils down to lucrative television contracts centered on football, with the Big Ten and the SEC far ahead of other power leagues in this regard. But if Clemson, Florida State or other ACC schools ended up leaving this conference, would they have a place to go?

The Syracuse Orange and the rest of the ACC could be in a precarious spot on a national scale.

Brett McMurphy, a national college football reporter, wrote in a post on his X page that the Big Ten and the SEC would be "unlikely" to add Florida State as a member if the Seminoles leave the ACC, and the ACC is able to survive in the future.

In his social media post, McMurphy said the Big Ten and the SEC "don’t want FSU because adding FSU doesn’t make financial sense, no desire to expand & 'they’ve been a disruptive partner,'" according to his sources.

Ouch.

Per an article from On3's Steve Samra, ESPN commentator Paul Finebaum and ESPN senior writer Heather Dinich also weighed in on this topic.

Finebaum, via ESPN's "Get Up" program, said in part: “Clemson, and especially Florida State, have been making a lot of noise. Florida State just went rogue, about a year ago, saying it’s too good, essentially, my word, not their’s, for the ACC. Clemson has been a drafting partner. But there doesn’t seem to be any interest right now, in really either the Big Ten or the SEC, for them."

Finebaum says he believes that an ACC school to keep an eye on as it pertains to possibly garnering interest from the Big Ten and/or the SEC is North Carolina. Dinich, meanwhile, brought up another ACC member to watch in this regard, and that's Virginia.

Getting back to Florida State and Clemson, if the Big Ten and the SEC aren't interested, then perhaps the Big 12 could be. In recent days, Jason Scheer, the senior editor and publisher of WildcatAuthority.com on the 247Sports network, had a post to his X page on this topic.