FSU Football: Writer rips location of Noles 2019 season opener

FSU football will start their season a little over two hours away from campus, and one writer ranked it the worst of the neutral site games this season.

A little over two calendar years ago, the FSU football team announced that they were effectively selling their game against Boise State as part of a home and home series from being played inside Doak Campbell Stadium in 2019 to Jacksonville – where the game was moved to the season opener and the 2020 game in Idaho remained as scheduled.

We’ll get to more about that second part in a moment, but it’s a game that has had some fans of the Seminoles complaining about being moved from Tallahassee while the return trip remains scheduled. It also has some people wondering how far it is for the Broncos to be playing a neutral site game that is less than 170 miles from the campus of their opponent.

You can add SB Nation’s Morgan Moriarty to that second group of people after she recently wrote an article ranking the game as the worst of the neutral site games next season when based on how much the location adds to the game.

"This one makes some of the least sense, because it will basically serve as a home game for the Noles (even the game’s website says so, lol)…TIAA Bank Stadium is a pretty unexciting venue, and I’m not sure why they couldn’t have just played in Tallahassee."

Now, I generally like Moriarty’s work so I’m not going to get into the fact that she said there were 15 neutral site games next season when there are actually 16 (she forgot Texas vs Rice being “neutral site” since it’s in Houston by not at Rice’s stadium) or that she called TIAA Bank Stadium uneventful but ranked Florida-Georgia fifth even though it’s played at the same place.

I’m more going to address the second part of this comment because it’s something that even some in the FSU football fan base need to hear: the reason for this move was clearly about money since the Seminoles will make the boatload of the money off the game while essentially only having to pay $400,000 to the Broncos.

As for the 2020 game, the Seminoles have until September 18th to cancel that game and have to pay just $1 million to do so. After that date, it gets moved up to $2 million. With a schedule that includes playing West Virginia in Atlanta and Florida among non-conference games on that year’s schedule, you can be willing to bet this game gets cancelled.

By doing that, the Seminoles will be able to schedule another non-conference game at home and have a seven game home slate next season – a move needed after recent news about the department losing money over the past few years.

Moving the game into a “neutral site” contest – yeah, I know it isn’t really one but I’m going with it – makes things look better on the surface when it comes time to cancel the game and turns this essentially into a kickoff classic like what is taking place in Atlanta, Arlington and now Orlando on yearly basis.

The game will now be the showcase battle in the Sunshine State after the move of the Florida-Miami game to the week before in Orlando – the game that Moriarty ranked as the top one on her list (not surprising since she’s a UF grad).