FSU, Clemson Reportedly Not Expected to Leave ACC After 2024-25 Season

If Florida State and Clemson are eventually going to depart the ACC, it reportedly isn't going to happen anytime soon.

While the two schools have until an Aug. 15 deadline to notify the ACC if they plan to leave by the 2025-26 academic year, ESPN's Pete Thamel reported Monday the expectation is that such a move will not happen.

Thamel also noted both schools are "in the throes of ongoing legal battles regarding the ACC's grant of rights and withdrawal fees, so there's been little expectation of imminent movement."

To say there has been instability in college sports when it comes to conference realignment in recent years would be a massive understatement.

Texas and Oklahoma will be in the SEC at the start of the 2024 football season, while Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington will be in the Big Ten. Elsewhere, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah will be in the Big 12, while California, SMU and Stanford will be in the ACC.

Oregon State and Washington State are all that remain of the Pac-12, and they made an agreement with the Mountain West to help them fill out their 2024 schedules.

It isn't difficult to look at the current landscape of college football in particular and see two conferences separating themselves from the rest in terms of quality of competition and money. The SEC and Big Ten feature the majority of the realistic national title contenders and generate the most revenue.

Florida State and Clemson are football powerhouses in their own right and surely see the writing on the wall when it comes to the ACC falling behind.

Yet, as Chip Patterson of CBS Sports noted, the ACC's current media rights contract runs until 2036. Both schools have issued legal challenges to the conference's Grant of Rights, and Florida State in particular has not exactly been shy about publicly declaring that it may need to leave the ACC down the line.

For now, though, they will both compete in the ACC.

While that means less revenue, it also opens up a more straightforward path to the expanded College Football Playoff. Many of the best teams in the country will be giving each other losses in the SEC and Big Ten throughout the campaign, which will open the door for the Seminoles, Tigers and others to secure spots with favorable records against weaker competition.