“The consequences of giving in to a narrative of the moment are destructive, far reaching, and permanent. Not just for Florida State, but college football as a whole.”
“The argument of whether a team is the ‘most deserving OR best’ is a false equivalence. It renders the season up to yesterday irrelevant and significantly damages the legitimacy of the College Football Playoff. The 2023 Florida State Seminoles are the epitome of a total TEAM. To eliminate them from a chance to compete for a national championship is an unwarranted injustice that shows complete disregard and disrespect for their performance and accomplishments. It is unforgiveable.”
Statement from Michael Alford, Vice President and Athletics Director, Florida State University (Taken from FSU’s website)
- Image taken from the Tampa Bay Times
Imagine a world where doing everything right still doesn’t yield the desired results. You put in the hard work, build up a high work ethic, and practice for countless hours until you can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. However, once you see the end goal, it becomes unidentifiable and forgotten because the validity of your work isn’t enough. This is the story of the Florida State Seminoles football team in 2023. The one team in the history of college football that has been left out of the playoff rankings, and isn’t getting a shot at the national championship even though they deserve all of it.
This year’s college football season has been extremely unpredictable. The former national champions not making the playoffs, the University of Washington rising through the ranks, and now the only big-name undefeated team, besides Washington and Michigan, is not included in the college football playoff field. The college football rankings were announced earlier today, and everyone is shocked at the results of the draw.
College football fans who respected FSU’s triumph to a 13-0 record scrambled to social media to voice their opinion on the matter, with some even saying that “the College Football Committee is trash!”.
After the ACC championship, in which FSU beat Louisville 16-6 to secure the title, Almost every major news outlet predicted FSU to be around the 2-4th seed in the playoffs, pairing up with Washington, Alabama, and Michigan. So, seeing this news is a complete shock to everyone who pays attention to college football.
There have been rumors floating around that FSU’s starting QB being hurt caused the rankings to appear as they are now. Unfortunately losing a star player could mean a missed opportunity for championship gold.
- Image taken from Syracuse.com
Florida State’s Head coach, Mike Norvell, came out with a statement today regarding the drawing and did not hesitate to voice his true, unfiltered opinion to the committee.
It is almost impossible that a team like Florida State didn’t make the playoffs. Florida State’s schedule was one of the toughest schedules in college football, playing a highly-ranked team almost every other week. For reference, The Seminoles beat all of the teams listed below in the span of a normal, 4 quarter-game (some of which contained large Touchdown margins, like beating LSU by more than 20 points in week 1), with only one game going to overtime (Clemson).
- Week 1: LSU
- Week 2: Southern Miss
- Week 3: Boston College
- Week 4: Clemson
- Week 5: Virginia Tech
- Week 6: Syracuse
- Week 7: Duke
- Week 8: Wake Forest
- Week 9: Pitt
- Week 10: Miami
- Week 11: North Alabama
- Week 12: Florida
- Week 13 (ACC championship): Louisville
Despite Florida State’s amazing track record this season, the official college football rankings have the Seminoles in at No. 5, not securing a spot in this year’s playoff. Even former NFL stars, commentators, and analysts were baffled about how the college football committee decided on these rankings, because they don’t make sense!
According to Tomahawknation (an outlet dedicated to Florida State football and athletics), “Florida State’s 19-game win streak is the 2nd-longest active streak nationally, the 2nd-longest in FSU history and 3rd-longest in ACC history. During its current win streak, Florida State has outscored its opponents 734-316”. If that isn’t enough evidence to warrant an opportunity at silverware, then I don’t know what is.
It is clear that Florida State is the most impressive team this year in college football. Fans from the SEC, ACC, Pac-12, and other conferences have to tip their hat towards the Seminole’s performance because the odds were stacked against them. Nobody expected this from FSU, and that’s the beauty of college football. It is unpredictable, exciting, and full of upsets. Every team works hard to achieve the ultimate goal of a national championship, but saying that Florida State put in overtime is an understatement compared to some of the teams and their schedules for the 2023-24 college football season.
So, how does this affect the playoffs? Only time will tell after a winner is crowned, but you can’t help the fact that if Florida State was present in a surprising “what-if” situation, things would be different.
- Images taken from Indystar and X (formerly known as Twitter)
Thank you for reading this article! Any feedback is appreciated in the comments below. It has been a while but I am back with another post! Stay tuned for more in the next couple of months.
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