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IN-DEPTH: The Auburn-Florida State Feud

© Chuck Bednar

As first discussed in Suite 101's Feb. 9 NCAA college football news roundup, The University of Auburn has decided to excerise an escape clause in their contract to play Florida State, and will not open the season against the Seminoles as planned. The deal signed between the two schools allowed Auburn to buy out the game by paying $500,000 to FSU. According to athletic director David Housel, the controversial move was made to avoid playing against Bobby Bowden, the father of former Auburn coach Terry Bowden.

"If we played the game as scheduled, the controversy surrounding the game and the turmoil of last season would be rehashed again and again and again over the next eight months," Housel told the Associated Press at that time. "The controversy would become bigger than the game, and that would be unfair to the players and coaches on both sides."

The decision angered FSU athletic director Dave Hart, who is still scrambling to schedule an 11th game for the Seminoles.

"We will deal with the specific elements of Auburn's untenable actions through the appropriate persons and channels over the course of the next several weeks," Hart said in a statement. "For now, our focus has to be on finding an 11th game."

"We will catch a lot of heat and criticism the next few weeks," added Housel. "Some of it fair, some of it unfair, but after that we can get on with our football program. This was an institutional decision, not just an athletic decision."

The schedule Sept. 2 matchup between these two school was to be college football's first father-son coaching matchup, but Terry Bowden's bizarre departure from Auburn last season created tension and uncertainty in the game. Soon after the announcement was made, the Huntsville (Ala.) Times reported that Auburn had reached an agreement to open their season with Division I-AA Appalachian State.

But the incident has turned even uglier than first reported. In a letter to Housel, ACC commissioner John Swofford said it was "absolutely reprehensible that a university the stature of Auburn would ever consider canceling a contracted football game that has been scheduled for national television less than seven months prior to kickoff." Swofford has since called for all nine ACC schools to boycott Auburn in every sport as punishment.

"If this is the way Auburn University is going to conduct its business, I feel it is my obligation as conference commissioner to ask all of our member institutions to seriously evaluate whether it makes sense to schedule Auburn in any sport," Swofford wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Orlando Sentinel. "We just cannot conduct business this way," Swofford wrote. "It damages the entire enterprise of intercollegiate athletics. It is simply wrong."

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