Florida State Becomes ACC’s 9th Member : Colleges: Officials at the independent football power are elated over the chance to join a major athletics conference.

Florida State officially joined the Atlantic Coast Conference today after receiving unanimous approval from the Board of Regents.

“This is an outstanding opportunity for Florida State, and I’m sure they’ll make the most of it,” said Charles Reed, chancellor of the state university system. “It’s a good fit for the Board of Regents’ goal of making student-athletes students first.”

The ACC formally extended the invitation Thursday night, and Florida State officials and the regents immediately moved through bureaucratic details to sanction the move.

Florida State President Bernard Sliger was elated with the outcome after months of deliberations over possible membership in the ACC or the Southeastern or Metro conferences.

“It’s an achievement for Florida State when you consider where we were 15 years ago in regard to this,” Sliger said. “If someone would have told me we’d be a likely candidate for a major all-sports conference . . . personally, I feel very, very good about what’s happened.”

Florida State officials called a news conference for Saturday at which Sliger and ACC Commissioner Gene Corrigan will discuss details of the membership.

“I think it’s a terrific opportunity for us in terms of every aspect of athletics, in terms of how they view athletics and how we view athletics,” Sliger said. “This is the fast lane, and we would hope we can keep up.”

Florida State is ranked third in this week’s Associated Press football poll and finished in the top three each of the last three years. Only once in those seasons did an ACC team finish in the Top 10; Clemson was ninth in 1988.

Corrigan said in a prepared statement that Thursday’s vote to expand followed long talks and that Florida State had been an attractive candidate from the outset.

The current members of the ACC are Clemson, Duke, Georgia Tech, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia and Wake Forest. Duke and Maryland voted against the expansion.

“I questioned whether expansion was in the best interests of the ACC,” Duke athletic director Tom Butters. “I never had a question about Florida State.”

The addition of Florida State marks the fourth time the ACC’s membership has changed. There were seven charter members in 1953--Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina and Wake Forest. Virginia joined later that year, South Carolina left in 1971, and Georgia Tech joined in 1978.

There has been speculation that if the ACC added a ninth school, a 10th would naturally follow. But ACC President Tom Spragens, Duke’s faculty representative, said he would oppose that and does not sense support for it.