Scott Stricklin addresses whether Florida would vote for, against adding Florida State to SEC

As certain members of the ACC continue their quest to wriggle free from the league’s restrictive Grant of Rights, the question of whether other conferences might add some ACC members has risen to the surface. The SEC is one such league that could potentially benefit from the departure of a Clemson or Florida State.

That is if SEC member schools are amenable.

It’s long been theorized that schools like Florida or South Carolina might vote against the inclusion of either of those programs, wanting to be the only program in the conference from the state for recruiting reasons.

Florida athletics director Scott Stricklin was asked directly about that and whether the Gators would support an SEC bid from the Seminoles.

“We have a good relationship with our friends in Tallahassee,” Stricklin said. “You know, I had somebody from Florida State recently ask me a similar question and I said, ‘We don’t have a veto. No school has a veto in this league. If you get three-quarters of the league to support expansion, we’re going to expand.'”

It isn’t terribly difficult to read between the lines there, with the subtle implication that Florida might not outright vote for Florida State to be included, but isn’t so vehemently opposed to it that if other SEC schools wanted to make the move they’d raise a stink come hell or high water.

Both programs could ostensibly increase the competitiveness of the league in football, with both having won national championships in the last decade.

It would make for even more compelling conference showdowns, though at what point the league becomes overly competitive to its own detriment is a valid question. But all those things are factors the SEC would weigh before making a move.

“The second thing I’d say is anybody who made our league better, we’d be supportive of joining the SEC,” Stricklin said. “Whenever we have expanded in the past, the leadership of the league was able to lay out, ‘This is why it makes sense to bring in Arkansas and South Carolina. This is why it makes sense to bring in A&M and Missouri. This is why Texas and OU makes sense.’ And we all saw financial projections, we saw competitive rationale and three-quarters of the league said, ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’

“So if ever an opportunity is out there — and again, no one’s had any conversations — that is the scenario where someone would walk in and say, ‘Here’s the school, here’s what they bring to the table, here’s how it makes us all better’ we would be supportive of it.”