2023 may end up going down as the year that finally breaks the ACC. Florida State athletics director Michael Alford publicly blasted the conference at several opportunities this year which culminated in news of the “Magnificent Seven” breaking prior to the conference’s spring meeting in Amelia Island. The league then undertook a controversial western expansion adding Cal, Stanford, and SMU by the thinnest of margins. Now news is coming out of South Carolina that Clemson may be announcing its departure from the league later this month.
It has long been speculated Clemson has similar feeling as Florida State regarding the ACC’s current financial gap compared to the SEC and Big Ten but there hadn’t been the kinds of public rumblings from Clemson that FSU administrators have been so freely airing.