West Virginia cancels 2012 football game at Florida State

By Kevin Kelley -

West Virginia has canceled their 2012 football game at Florida State, the Seminoles announced today. West Virginia will pay FSU $500,000 for the cancellation.

The Mountaineers were scheduled to visit Doak Campbell Stadium on Sept. 8, 2012. The two schools are also slated to play Sept. 14, 2013 at West Virginia. No announcement was made about the future of that game, but WVU will also need to cancel one of their non-conference games that season since they have four on the books.

West Virginia is canceling the FSU game in preparation for playing a Big 12 schedule in 2012. With ten teams in the Big 12, each school will play a nine-game conference schedule.

Florida State will need to act quickly to get a new opponent for their fourth non-conference game. The ACC schedule should be released this month and the Seminoles need their schedule completely set for season ticket holders and marketing.

FSU could look for an FCS school, but they are already slated to open the season against Murray State on Sept. 1. Brett McMurphy of CBSSports.com suggests that the Noles contact schools in the Big East since they will need an extra game with the departure of West Virginia.

Statement from FSU AD Randy Spetman:

“We were informed in writing late Friday afternoon of West Virginia University’s intention to cancel its 2012 football game with Florida State University scheduled for September 8 in Tallahassee. We are disappointed for our coaches, players and fans that this game will not take place as originally scheduled. We now face the challenge of completing our 2012 schedule just seven months before the start of the season. We will work quickly and diligently to fill the hole on our schedule and will communicate with our season ticket holders and fans as the process moves forward.”

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Comments (9)

Now, FSU will go after a non-BCS 1-A opponent, who will drop an already contracted game w/an 1-AA team, which will force them to scramble late for possibly a D-2 game. total BS, caused by all this re-allignment these next 12 months. this happened once or twice last Winter.

Great… The ONLY game I was planning on attending next season is now gone.
Sorry WVU… poor move on your part. I’m sure I’m not the only disappointed fan.

Kevin – Not necessarily. If WVU leaves the BE, every BE team will need to find another game. If that happens, FSU will fill its hole with Pittsburgh or Syracuse.

Yep, every Big East team needs to add a game. Still other teams who need games too. Plenty of options for Florida State left.

We knew we were in over our head as soon as we heard FSU should be good in 2012. It would be different if we would’ve stayed in the Big East b/c we didn’t play anybody good and staying healthy was not a problem. Now that we are in the Big-12 we will have to face good teams and not have a 3 week span of creampuffs like we are accustomed to. Sorry FSU, if we didn’t reschedule the games against you, we would have no shot at a the Idaho Potato bowl and would be lucky to make the Kraft Fight Hunger bowl. Considering we are used to having a free ride to good bowl games and we no longer have that free ride status, then we have to help our cause by eliminating the game against a highly ranked FSU team that could’ve actually helped us gain a little respect as a football team. We decided on pleasing the boosters, mainly Popcorn Sutton, so that we hopefully can make a bowl game after last year’s successful run being ranked #24 and making the Orange bowl against a team that our alum T Bowden gave us their playbook he wrote for them previously. It is our time to shine in the Beef O’Brady’s bowl in 2013!