SEC football expansion: Would Florida block Seminoles from joining?

College football conference realignment is moving back into the conversation this offseason after Florida State and Clemson both brought lawsuits against the ACC and its exit fees, ostensibly in an effort to find a way out of the league and into a more profitable situation going forward.

Amid speculation that two marquee brands could be on the move, the SEC appears to be a logical destination. Would that be something Florida would support? Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin answered that question at SEC spring meetings.

“We have a good relationship with our friends in Tallahassee,” Stricklin told reporters.

“No school has a veto in this league. If you get three quarters of the league to support expansion, we’re going to expand. Anybody who made our league better, we’d be supportive of joining the SEC.”

Read More: Clemson, FSU will leave ACC eventually, analyst predicts

Stricklin added that the SEC has not had talks with Florida State or any other school about joining the conference.

“Whenever we’ve 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; A&M and Missouri; why Texas and OU make sense.'” he said.

“We all saw financial projections, competitive rationale, and three quarters of the league said, ‘Let’s do this.’

“If there were ever opportunities out there — and, again, no one has had any conversations — that is the scenario where somebody walks in and says, ‘Here’s a school, here’s what they bring to the table, here’s how it makes us all better.’ We would be supportive of that.”

Florida State figures to be a highly-attractive target for any conference seeking to expand, given its brand, long-term success, and future, especially in football.

The school is also located in a state with a prominent media market and that is a fiercely competitive recruiting ground for football programs nationally.

FSU and Clemson are challenging the ACC’s grant of rights agreement that binds schools to the conference through 2036, a process that is expected to take a while.

But if that process winds up with the Seminoles leaving the ACC, it appears their biggest rivals would welcome them into the SEC.

–

More college football from SI: Top 25 Rankings | Schedule | Teams

Follow College Football HQ: Bookmark | Rankings | Picks