Florida State AD Michael Alford 'anxious' to see how future with ACC shakes out
Florida State athletic director Michael Alford maintained the Seminoles were one of the top brands in collegiate sports.
So amid a lawsuit against the ACC, Alford attended the ACC meetings this week and even sensed no animosity. Ultimately, the AD just wants what’s best for the school and its student athletes.
That comes with the territory when you have an elite brand.
“I’m all for (the student athletes) getting the experience and everything they need to have success in life and us providing that to them,” Alford said on College Sports Radio on Sirius XM. “And now we’re going to have to make decisions. And seeing what’s coming forward and make sure that we’re making sure that we’re providing them the resources that we’re allowed to provide them so we can compete at an elite level.
“And that comes with revenue, and I’m anxious to see where all this shakes out. I’ll tell you we have Pro Formas that go all the way out to 2043. We got a budget that goes out there and we got about eight different decision tree metrics in that budget that’s gonna spark one thing or the next in our decision making process.”
Whether or not this means Florida State will leave the ACC remains to be seen.
“But it’s just getting prepared as much as you can for when this shakes out to where we can be and we think we were one of the top brands,” Alford said. “We’re in a great conference. We got great brands in this conference, but Florida State in my eyes, is one of the top brands in collegiate sports and we got to make sure that we’re providing the resources to compete at that elite level.”
While at the meetings, Alford didn’t totally say no to Florida State ultimately staying in the ACC, should all sides figure something out.
“We’ll just wait and let it play out,” Alford said, via Warchant. “We have great partners in this conference and great relationships. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to do what’s best for Florida State and look at the changing environment of collegiate athletics and make sure we’re there to be successful.”
Despite that comment from Alford, Warchant’s Ira Schoffel reported Florida State has every intention of leaving the conference at some point.
On the football end of things, which is the money maker, Florida State doesn’t want to be left behind in the College Football Playoff earnings.
“You’re seeing that even more, as anticipated, with the CFP gap now growing even more,” Alford said. “So it’s nothing new that we haven’t talked about. … That conversation’s not new. Others have joined us in that conversation, but it’s not new.”