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Out here in the real world of car payments and one home and shuttling children every which way, those of us with blue collars or white collars or work-from-home T-shirt collars don't often get to see the small talk of rich and powerful people.

Such an opportunity came yesterday when Florida State's administration staged -- and we do want to emphasize the term "staged" -- a video conference call.

They saved the juicy realignment-related stuff until the end.

What sport other than college football gives us the ability to witness spectacles like this unfold? It's so often a theater of the absurd, as we saw when FSU's higher-ups moved into the publicity-stunt portion of their proceedings.

But it's our theater, dammit.

As we told our subscribers Wednesday morning on our members-only message board in forecasting just about everything that happened at FSU later in the afternoon, the sharp dichotomy in public messaging at the two schools is not at all indicative of their private strategies in the realignment game.

Clemson and FSU are very much aligned as they very rightly look out for themselves in a conference that could be doomed long-term.

But their public approaches couldn't be more different.

POLITICAL THEATER (For subscribers-only)

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