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Bruce Feldman: Florida State, Clemson hold keys to next step of college football realignment

Barkley-Truaxby:Barkley Truax09/02/23

BarkleyTruax

NCAA Football: William & Mary at Virginia
Sep 4, 2021; Charlottesville, Virginia, USA; A detailed view of the ACC logo on the down marker used during the game between William & Mary Tribe and the Virginia Cavaliers at Scott Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Scott Taetsch-USA TODAY Sports

College athletics will be turned on its head when conference realignment shifts every Power Five conference next July, for better or for worse.

After the ACC gained the services of Stanford, Cal and SMU earlier this week, many guessed that those three programs would be the final pieces to fall into place before the changes take place. According to Fox Sports’ Bruce Feldman, more changes are on the horizon.

“I seriously doubt it,” Feldman said on Big Noon Kickoff. “It’s just a matter of how soon the next big moves happen. Give credit to ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips. He was proactive in times when other leagues (the Pac-12) … got left in the dust. One thing worth noting are the schools voting against this expansion: Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina. All three of them have aspects that make them attractive to the SEC and the Big Ten.

“It’s also worth noting that Florida State especially — we’ve never seen a public display of saber-rattling out of all this that is going on. The big issue, ultimately, is how quickly can they get around the ACC’s grant of rights which ties them together until 2036. I think it’s a matter of when, and not if when it comes to the next big dominoes to fall.”

With the athletics calendar underway, it’s not farfetched to say that we won’t see any moves until after the school year ends. At the same time, some believe the notion that the ACC gained the services of those three programs as a sort of insurance policy if they were to lose any of the three heavy hitters mentioned above. As the ACC added all three of those three schools in the lead-up to Week 1, anything is possible.

Others have had other ideas of conference realignment, including ESPN College GameDay host Kirk Herbsreit, who noted that once you put teams like Penn State and West Virginia on the field together (they play each other during Week 1), it only makes sense to keep it that way. After all, it has always geographically made sense for the Mountaineers to be in the Big Ten. Not that it matters anymore, as the California Golden Bears are now in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

If one thing is certain, no conference is safe from realignment. Every conference will be impacted by it once July of 2024 rolls around, and the landscape will continue to be ever-changing.