Steve Spurrier on further conference realignment: 'I think FSU definitely belongs in the SEC'

Conference realignment has once again shaken up college football and while 2024 will be our first real glimpse at the new alignments, the wheels might not yet be done spinning.

Clemson and Florida State are currently in legal proceedings with the ACC, seeking a way out of the league’s Grant of Rights.

And at least one prominent fixture in college football feels it’s just a matter of time until one or both join a bigger conference. In fact, to former Florida and South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, one conference is a definite fit.

“I think FSU definitely belongs in the SEC,” Spurrier said on the A Peek Inside Florida Gators Football podcast. “But Clemson sort of belongs there also. But I don’t know if the SEC wants to go to 18 teams. So I don’t know, maybe the Big Ten would like to have them. Who knows? But it is what it is. I think you just go one year at a time and then after that see where you’re at and go from there.”

From the Head Ball Coach, that’s quite a ringing endorsement for Florida State to the SEC. For years, Florida has at least unofficially been opposed to Florida State joining the league via conference realignment.

Even conference commissioner Greg Sankey seemed to indicate the SEC isn’t interested when he said it wouldn’t make sense to further split the conference’s pie.

But from purely a football standpoint, Spurrier thinks both teams would fare reasonably well in the SEC if there were further conference realignment.

“They’d do very well the way they played last year,” Spurrier said of Florida State. “And I think Clemson would do pretty well. So, again, they would do better in the ACC as far as winning conference championships, but they want to play in the big-time and I think within maybe two to three years they will be in a different conference.”

However future conference realignment plays out, the fact that both schools are looking for an exit at this point is pretty well established.

“Yeah, they and Clemson are trying to get out,” Spurrier said. “They’re not hiding that fact. And they feel like their football programs and their other programs are just as good as a lot of these SEC teams. I think every SEC team receives I think around $80 million from television, and I think the ACC, those guys are only receiving like $40 to $50 (million), something like that.

“So anyway, there’s a huge difference in what these schools are getting and that’s the big reason that FSU and Clemson are trying to jump out of that conference and get in a big one.”