College football insider: Clemson, FSU are 'clearly not going to be in the ACC'

Clemson and Florida State are in the process of suing the ACC to get out of the league. College football insider Ross Dellenger expects the process to end with both schools leaving the conference.

Dellenger isn’t sure how long it will take, but he doesn’t expect the two ACC powerhouse programs to stay in the league long term, he said Tuesday on The Paul Finebaum Show.

“Two of his most valuable football programs are trying to leave,” Dellenger said of ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips. “I think it’s pretty clear Clemson and Florida State are not going to be in the ACC for the permanent future, whether that’s two years, three years or four years, they’re going to get out of the league.”

Dellenger didn’t speculate on what it might cost for Florida State and Clemson to head to another conference, or which conference they might go to.

However, he expects them to end up elsewhere in the not-too-distant future.

“I don’t know where they’re going to go. I don’t know what their future is,” Dellenger said. “But it’s clearly not going to be in the ACC. And it’ll be interesting to see what happens there. But (Jim Phillips) is dealing with a lot.”

Jim Phillips has been the ACC Commissioner since 2021 after joining the conference during a challenging stretch. The ACC is locked into the Grant of Rights until 2036 and is unable to negotiate a new TV deal as the SEC and Big Ten bring in millions and millions of dollars more.

Phillips and the league did bring in Cal, Stanford and SMU last year to try to shore up the long-term future of the ACC.

“That’s why they went out and got Cal, Stanford and SMU, to make sure they kept intact enough teams in the league to avoid what happened in the Pac-12,” Dellenger said.

“I had a college athletics administrator give me a great quote. He said, ‘Five power conferences could not survive. Four cannot either.’ And I think we’re heading towards a three power conference structure — Big Ten, SEC and whatever else there on the third one.”

It seems that Florida State and Clemson are most likely to end up in either the SEC or Big Ten, at least if they have their way.

The SEC makes the most sense geographically as FSU and Clemson already have in-state rivals in that conference. However, the Big Ten could choose to expand its reach and attempt to bring in teams from the south.

It will be interesting to see how everything unfolds over the next few years.