Florida State football, recruiting news: Can a non-Clemson ACC team make the playoff?

- A continuation of yesterday's play off talk as David Hale of ESPN states his case for whether a non-Clemson ACC team could make the College Football Playoff.

- Sports Illustrated's Pete Thamel analyzes the potentially chaotic coaching carousel that will happen this summer, naming potential successors at many definite and probably job openings.

- Corey Clark, columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat, debates whether or not Florida State can bounce back from their first ACC loss in over three years.

This is a position the Florida State players, coaches and fans haven't found themselves in since 2012. And really the loss to Florida that year was different than this one because the Seminoles had an ACC Championship to play for the very next week - a title the program hadn't won in seven years.

Florida State should beat the Orange. Whether it's hung over from the inexplicable loss or not.

But if the Seminoles are going to make this a special season, and not just a "rebuilding" one, this week will be a defining moment for the 2015 FSU football team.

Because how they respond to this is how they will be remembered.

- For those curious about the layoffs that ESPN has had to make recently, John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal did some research and believes that they can attributed to the ever-growing rights deals that the Worldwide Leader in Sports must sign with each professional sports league.

Many past and present employees place most of the blame for the layoffs on the company's huge NFL, MLB and NBA rights deals. The most frequent criticism heard last week dealt with the NFL contract, which is worth a whopping $1.9 billion per year — $800 million more than the NFL's next biggest deal. Second-guessers believe ESPN had the leverage to cut a better deal and question whether another media company was within $500 million of ESPN's offer. There aren't many other networks that could afford to pay close to $2 billion per year for the NFL's least competitive package.

- As Bud Elliott pointed out in a recent article, 2017 4* WR D.J. Matthews, who is currently committed to Florida State, took to Twitter during the Georgia Tech game to express his feelings about the offensive output being put forth by FSU.

- More recruiting news as Ryan Bartow of 247 recently stated that 2016 linebacker and FSU commit Emmett Rice will be taking visits  to West Virginia, Louisville, and Syracuse in the near future. ($)