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Next year, all this College Football Playoff debate will become moot with the CFP expanding to 12 teams. Debating numbers 3, 4 and 5 is very different from 10, 11, 12 and 13. When you lose the game you lose the benefit of the doubt. Even in SEC.
But there’s still a four-team field this year, and with so many variables involved in the decision, there’s a lot to analyze. And to put it plainly: The College Football Playoff committee got it wrong. College football has it, or at least it has used to be – until Correct Now – the best regular season in sports because the games matter most. We have a smaller sample size in this sport than any other sport.
Taking out an undefeated 13-0 Florida State team from a Power 5 conference was the wrong decision.
Michigan and Washington, both undefeated with top-10 wins, were easy. The problem for the College Football Playoff committee was that there were three teams with legitimate arguments for the final two slots.
Sorry, Georgia. You didn’t win your conference title, and in this format, that means something.
Booger McFarland is not happy that Alabama joined the CFP instead of the undefeated Florida State team.
“To me, it’s a travesty of sports… One team has lost, and that’s Alabama. That’s not the case at Florida State.” pic.twitter.com/3rhBvvpT1D
– Awful Announcement (@awfulaannouncement) 3 December 2023
Alabama and the SEC are the proverbial elephants in the room. Nick Saban is the greatest coach of all time, and for me, this year was the greatest coaching job he’s ever done in a season. His team lost at home to Texas in Week 2 and looked no better as they struggled with a mediocre USF team the following week. But Jalen Miller continued to make big strides and when it mattered most, he and the Tide played enough games to defeat a Bulldogs team that was nowhere near as dominant as it had been in its previous two title seasons.
The problem for Alabama — and the SEC — is the partner they’re going to bring in: Texas. Did Gave Alabama a crushing defeat in Tuscaloosa. It happened, and there was nothing strange about it.
The Longhorns, 12-1, were the class of the Big 12. The Big 12 didn’t have the second-best team this year, but Oklahoma State beat Oklahoma, the team faltered against Texas and, as expected, Texas beat Oklahoma. Cowboy Saturday. Remember, this was an Oklahoma State team that went 9-3 and lost against South Alabama and UCF by a combined score of 78-10. This wasn’t going to help Texas, but do we forget that a week earlier, Alabama had barely escaped against an Auburn team that had been blown out by New Mexico State, 31-10, at home?
The bigger issue was with Florida State, the 13-0 Seminoles from the ACC. As we all know, FSU lost star quarterback Jordan Travis two weeks ago. The Seminoles’ backup Tate Rodemaker, who had replaced them at Louisville when Travis was injured a year earlier, was not performing well in the regular season finale at arch-rival Florida. He also got hurt.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips calls it “unfathomable” that Florida State was left out. “The state of Florida deserved better. “College football deserved better.”
His statement: pic.twitter.com/3BYozQOSog
-Andrew Carter (@_andrewcarter) 3 December 2023
FSU’s third-stringer, Brock Glenn, had a disappointing performance in the ACC Championship Game, but the defense was effective. Led by Braden Fiske and Jared Vers, the Seminoles had 14 TFLs and seven sacks and became the first team in five years to hold the Jeff Brohm offense under 200 total yards. Not coincidentally, that same FSU defense started the year by dominating LSU and the SEC’s biggest star, Jayden Daniels, 45–24, and holding the SEC and the nation’s No. 1 offense to its worst performance of the season.
FSU was the only team to hold Daniels to less than 60 percent of his passing in a game. Daniels rushed for almost 100 fewer yards (99) against the Noles than he did playing the Crimson Tide.
The CFP rankings often turn into an argument of “best” versus “fittest.” Best Whenever your team loses or has a bad loss that they can’t explain, it’s usually a get out of jail card. Similar to this nonsense, “Well, Vegas will make much more than the touchdown favorite against them.” Great. But tell this to Washington. The Huskies were down by nearly double digits last week against Oregon, a team they had already beaten this year. … Well, the Huskies beat the Ducks again.
I understood. The SEC has been the most dominant conference in college football for the past two decades. But if you’ve been paying attention, this year isn’t like those other years. It has been a disappointing year for the SEC. The ACC actually went 6-4 against the SEC this year. If This was a losing FSU team, I would say the Seminoles didn’t earn their way, but they did. Texas shouldn’t have been left out by a team it beat at its own venue.
As colleague David Ubben wrote Saturday night, games should matter. What’s the point of playing them if we try to explain them away and rationalize them?
(Top photo Florida State: John Byram/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
