TAMPA, Fla. — Florida State has a bigger problem than missing the playoffs this season, but let me say this first: College football overcomplicates a very simple formula that if you win, it is good. If you lose, it is bad.
And I know, you have to factor in the strength of the schedule, which is not a simple formula during the season, but once the year is over, that picture becomes pretty clear on paper.
I don’t know why, when or how in college football it became acceptable to start weighing in on injuries and other mitigating factors within a boardroom, but the slippery slope to providing a voice to empirical data has turned into a Slip 'N Slide.
The 2014 Ohio State team is brought up a lot when it comes to Florida State this season because of the late injury to a stud quarterback. Still, you have to remember that was a tough decision with one-loss OSU, one-loss TCU and one-loss Baylor and the Big 12 didn’t even have a title game. I think what people need to remember about 2014 is not Ohio State but FSU.
The eye-test said they were an underwhelming team, but they went perfect, made the playoffs and got beaten badly by Oregon. The way FSU was viewed that year is the way FSU this year was viewed these final two weeks. Some might argue that story is proof the committee did the right thing. Others will say at least FSU earned the opportunity to compete for a title.
I mean, let’s even look at 2023 Washington. This team has not looked like the eye test for the back half of the year. Everyone told me Oregon was, arguably, the best team in the country. They were nearly 10-point favorites and the Huskies took care of business. Before that game was played, I bet if you asked fans who you’d rather see in the playoffs, Oregon or UW, most would have picked Oregon. But they played the game and a lot of smart people were wrong.
We can go back and forth between perception and reality — where we were right, where we were wrong — but in the end, a committee telling us who they think are the best teams in the country seems stupid, right? It has always felt that way just like choosing a four-team playoff system with five power conferences.
There’s zero formula. Zero consistency. The committee changes bodies every few years. The rankings are not transparent. They are a farce. A fictitious what-if game week after week where the committee hopes to get bailed out of a tough decision to just, in the end, order things the way they wanted to anyway. It’s an ambiguous money grab on something simple. Winning equals good. Losing equals bad. Is the strength of the schedule ridiculously tilted? If there’s a tie among the group, let’s discuss.
Professional sports have added Wild Cards to be more inclusive, but they’ve never debated injuries or personnel on rosters in the process.
There’s a hubris within the sport that confuses me and a greed that disappoints me, but I’ll save that rant for a different day. Here’s the thing for FSU going forward: The College Football Playoff committee just told them that beating the 16th-ranked team in the country — in the ACC Title Game — with a 3rd-string quarterback is not good enough.
Florida State is a premiere program, the Noles are used to sitting at the cool kid table, but right now, there are the Have’s and there are the Have Not’s in this sport and I think FSU might be more of a Have Not than originally thought.
The first order of business is they have to get out of the ACC. It was talked about all offseason, they’re looking for ways to do it, but right now they’re stuck especially with the SEC and Big Ten getting bigger and, seemingly, more competitive. Even though people will tell you a 12-team playoff will make things better in the future, it’s only half true.
Yeah, something like what happened to FSU this year won’t happen again, but what happens if a 1-loss FSU team moving forward doesn’t win the ACC Championship? Do you think they’ll be given the benefit of the doubt in the rankings over a two-loss B1G or SEC team? Do you not think we won’t hear about the gauntlet those conferences have to go through? There is still a committee making playoff decisions and that committee is going to bend to new narratives and continue to complicate things.
So that’s the bigger problem here. The fact that winning the ACC undefeated was still not good enough.
And some might say I’m overreacting to the QB getting hurt and I want to ask, am I? Because I might think the best four teams are in the College Football Playoff, but I don’t think the right four teams are in the playoffs. More college football fans prefer the former, I prefer the latter and letting them prove it on the field.
Don’t act like you know what would happen with FSU if they earned a spot in the Top 4. That’s how we got into this problem in the first place.