Florida State football looking to schedule West Coast teams

Wayne McGahee III | Tallahassee Democrat

Anywhere at any time.

That's how Bobby Bowden built the Florida State program in the early 1980s, and that's the mentality that FSU head coach Willie Taggart is taking with the modern-day Seminoles.

"I suspect that will be more and more that way as he establishes himself here because I don’t perceive that Willie feels that there’s anybody out there or that there will be anybody out there that he wouldn’t want to schedule if it makes sense for him," FSU Vice President and Director of Athletics Stan Wilcox told the Tallahassee Democrat.

"Whether it’s from a recruiting perspective or from an exposure perspective. I think if it’s a West Coast team, we would go out there and play them, they would come here and play us.”

FSU vs Boise State could just be the beginning

FSU already has one trip out west scheduled for the 2020 season when the Seminoles travel to Boise State, and even more could be on the way.

Wilcox and the FSU administration have looked into the schedules of USC, UCLA, and possibly Stanford to see if scheduling a home-and-home series would be viable.

FSU is also open to playing a neutral site game on the West Coast.

"I want to say that we even started looking, we did look at some of the West Coast teams if we were to do a home-and-home series with them, when that could be," Wilcox said.

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"The one thing about football scheduling is everybody does scheduling so far out and therefore, sometimes you can’t match up the dates that you want... I know if it makes sense for us, we will do it if it’s a West Coast team, a Midwest team or an East Coast team."

Recruiting in the West Coast one of the reasons for looking westward

The Seminoles had a home-and-home series in 1997-1998 with the Trojans where FSU won both games 14-7 and 30-10. FSU has never played Stanford and beat UCLA 44-27 in the 2006 Emerald Bowl in the only meeting between FSU and the Bruins.

One of the main reasons that FSU is looking west is because of Willie Taggart and the recruiting ties that he brought with him from Oregon when he became the head coach of the Seminoles.

FSU is always looking to maximize its recruiting advantage and adding games in the home states of West Coast prospects is one way to get exposure.

The Seminoles signed five-star safety Jaiden Woodbey and four-star tight end Camren McDonald out of California and four-star wide receiver Tre'Shaun Harrison out of Washington in the 2018 recruiting class, and are looking to sign more West Coast players in 2019 starting with five-star California defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux, the No. 1 overall player in the 247Sports composite rankings.

The venue and the amount of money that FSU would receive to play in that game are also major factors in choosing a neutral site game.

"The venue, number one, and whoever is going to be promoting the event, basically who has the rights to the event, who will be looking to get the rights to the event," Wilcox said.

"They have to come up with the right number. That’s one thing. Number two, you look at where you might be recruiting, where you might have a concentration of your current players if they’re from that particular area. You’re also looking at is that an area of the country that we want to extend our reach to?

"There may not be as many alumni in that area, but depending on who we are recruiting in the future, who we have on our team and just that market, it can make sense for us to be there. We were doing some recruiting in Texas and so that’s why we went and played Oklahoma State there. It made sense."

Venues with high concentrations of Florida State alumni also top of mind

FSU will also look into playing neutral site games in areas with a high concentration of FSU alumni like Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Orlando.

The Seminoles have a neutral site game scheduled against West Virginia to open the 2020 season in Atlanta. FSU will also be playing Boise State in Jacksonville later in 2019, but that is part of the home-and-home with the Broncos.

"Atlanta always makes sense because of the concentration of alumni that we have there, but we haven’t had that great of success in Atlanta so I don’t know," Wilcox said.

"That’s another factor that comes into consideration is how well we’ve done in that particular venue. You get an opportunity to play in a different venue from time to time within the state of Florida, that’s sometimes important because you also have a number of different alumni that are coming from South Florida or Central Florida to Tallahassee.

"We took the spring game down to Orlando a couple of years ago. I wouldn’t have expected to have that many people, basically a sellout for our spring game but it made a lot of sense. With it having that much success for a spring game, you have to think about what if we had a neutral-site game there. That’s going to definitely be a sellout.

"Those are probably the factors that all come into play when we think about playing a neutral-site game."

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FSU isn't afraid of a daunting schedule

FSU doesn't back down from scheduling high quality opponents.

The Seminoles had a home-and-home series with Oklahoma and neutral site games against Oklahoma State, Alabama, and Ole Miss over the last eight years. The Seminoles also play Florida every year, and play Notre Dame every four years.

This year, FSU's schedule is one of the most difficult in college football.

The Seminoles are one of just two teams in all of college football -- Rice -- to play 10 teams that had winning records in 2017. Five of those teams finished the year ranked.

FSU opens the season at home on Sept. 3 against Virginia Tech on Labor Day night, and then plays at home against Samford before traveling to Syracuse.

VT will be breaking in a brand new secondary, but FSU will be breaking in new offensive and defensive systems in the first game of the season.

The Seminoles return home to play Northern Illinois on Sept. 22. The Huskies have become one of the premier mid-major programs in college football over the last two decades.

FSU plays on the road against Louisville and Miami the next two weeks before returning home to take on Wake Forest on Oct. 20.

The Demon Deacons have played the Seminoles extremely tough in recent years, and were a late touchdown from James Blackman to Auden Tate away from heading into overtime in 2017.

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The schedule gets really rough for the Seminoles after that.

FSU plays at home against three-time defending ACC Champion Clemson on Oct. 27 before heading on the road for contests at North Carolina State and Notre Dame.

N.C. State returns arguably the top quarterback in the conference in Ryan Finley, and Notre Dame was in the race to make the College Football playoff in November last year.

FSU closes out the season at home against Boston College and Florida.

The Eagles trounced the Seminoles 35-3 a year ago, but FSU hasn't lost to UF in five years.

ESPN ranks FSU's schedule as the second hardest in college football behind UCLA and gives the Seminoles a zero percent chance of winning every game on its schedule in 2018.

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