The ACC Kickoff event always feels like the unofficial start of football season.

Coaches, players, administrators and media members from across the conference will descend on Charlotte to commence talking season shortly before teams open preseason camp ahead of the 2024 football season.

This year, the ACC will be welcoming three new member institutions in SMU, Cal and Stanford that will be making their debuts in the conference.

Because Florida State kicks off the season in Week 0 vs. Georgia Tech in Dublin, the Seminoles will be in attendance on Day 1 of ACC Kickoff Monday. Head coach Mike Norvell will be joined by offensive lineman Darius Washington, defensive end Patrick Payton and defensive tackle Josh Farmer to represent the Seminoles.

Before the Osceola’s extensive coverage begins from Charlotte on Monday morning — look for live update threads throughout the day — here are three storylines to monitor entering the event.

A year ago, everything was not exactly hunky-dory in the ACC.

There were murmurs of FSU and a few other schools not exactly being thrilled with the state of the conference’s financial situation relative to the SEC and Big Ten. There were the Magnificent Seven rumors of teams exploring a path out of the ACC Grant of Rights at ACC Spring Meetings in Amelia Island in May.

But things have certainly gotten a lot worse for the conference over the last 12 months.

FSU Board of Trustees members candidly said in a meeting in August that they didn’t believe their school could remain competitive in the ACC financially long term.

In December, FSU filed a lawsuit against the ACC and the conference in turn filed a suit against the school. In March, Clemson followed suit, joining FSU with a lawsuit of its own against the ACC.

Now, ACC Kickoff begins Monday unlike any conference preseason media event in the history of college football. Two schools with active, ongoing lawsuits filed against the conference they are desperately trying to escape from will send coach and player representatives to Charlotte for an event where their teams are considered two of the best in the ACC this season.

In fact, Mike Norvell and FSU’s three player reps will take the stage mere hours after ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips takes the stage for his annual state of the league address.

Norvell won’t talk much, if at all, about the lawsuit during his time at the podium. But I’m quite fascinated to see how Phillips handles this truly unique situation.

How real is he about the state of the league? Does he put a positive spin on everything? How big a selling point are the three new schools that will be making their ACC debut this season?

How much acclaim does he throw onto FSU’s 2023 football success or does he focus more on the ACC’s national championships in field hockey, women’s cross country, women’s lacrosse and women’s golf over the last 12 months?

I’m not expecting too much, but I’m fascinated to see how it plays out and how the line of questioning from reporters in attendance goes. That is, if Phillips doesn’t just filibuster the entire allotted time with an opening statement.

This year’s ACC Kickoff will be a fitting representation of the state of roster building in today’s college football.

Of the 17 teams in attendance, 13 of them will bring at least one player representative who transferred into the program. Despite the “Transfer U” narrative that has surrounded the FSU football program, the Seminoles are one of only four schools that is bringing entirely homegrown players, along with Clemson (a team that doesn’t take transfers), Stanford (a team that can’t take many transfers because of its high academic standards) and Wake Forest.

Instead, FSU is bringing three stellar players that it signed out of high school and developed into very good players.

On the other end of the spectrum, two of the three players Miami is bringing to ACC Kickoff are transfer additions.

I don’t know if that was an intentional choice on FSU’s part. It was widely believed before he put out a statement that transfer quarterback DJ Uiagalelei would appear at ACC Kickoff. But Uiagalelei said that he wanted three players who were on last year’s ACC Championship team to represent the Seminoles in Charlotte.

That certainly does feel fitting as FSU turns the page from a team that accomplished so much in 2023 to one with plenty of new faces but also a few familiar ones.

It also won’t hurt FSU prove that narrative is a bit off-base. While the portal has been big in FSU’s rebuild under Norvell, they have also signed and developed some exceptional high-school players. They’ll prove that Monday and throughout the 2024 season.

FSU was the cream of the ACC crop in 2023.

Picked to finish second behind ACC by media members in the preseason, FSU rattled off an undefeated regular season and won the conference for the first time since 2015 before becoming the first undefeated Power Five champion to get snubbed from the College Football Playoff in history.

That will certainly be a major motivation for the returning players on this year’s team entering the 2024 season. However, it’s fair to wonder how the Seminoles will be perceived in this year’s ACC pecking order with all they have to replace off last year’s team.

Even though Clemson had been on a bit of a downslope from its double-national-championship run over the last few years, the Tigers got the benefit of the doubt a year ago and were picked over FSU to win the ACC in 2023.

Does FSU’s one uber-successful season give Norvell and the Seminoles the same benefit of the doubt this year? Is FSU picked to repeat? Or do the team’s losses cause the collective ACC media to default to picking Clemson once again given its larger level of continuity, albeit at a lesser level?

What about a wild card like Miami? The Hurricanes, with potential ACC Preseason Player of the Year Cam Ward at quarterback, are being viewed as a dark horse in the conference. NC State, Virginia Tech and Louisville are a few other trendy picks to surprise in 2024.

It won’t have any effect whatsoever on how games play out, but I’m intrigued to see how others view the projected order of finish in the ACC with no sure thing at the top and a few wildly different approaches to roster building among the expected top teams in the league.

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