Next year, all this College Football Playoff contention will be is arguing over expanding the CFP to 12 teams. The dispute in Nos. 3, 4 and 5 are very different from 10, 11, 12 and 13. You lose the benefit of the doubt when you lose games. Even in the SEC.
But this year is still a four-team field, and with so many variables going into the decision, there’s a lot to dissect. And to put it plainly: the College Football Playoff committee made a mistake. College football has, or at least it does used have — until right today — the best regular season in sports because the games matter most. We have a smaller sample size in this sport than others.
Leaving an undefeated 13-0 Florida State team in a Power 5 conference was a bad decision.
Michigan and Washington, both undefeated in top-10 wins, are the easy ones. The problem for the College Football Playoff committee is that there are three teams with legitimate arguments for the final two spots.
Sorry, Georgia. You didn’t win your conference title, and in this format, that has to count.
Booger McFarland wasn’t happy that Alabama got into the CFP with an undefeated Florida State team.
“To me, it’s a travesty in sports…One team lost, and that’s Alabama. The other one isn’t Florida State.” pic.twitter.com/3rhBvvpT1D
— Awful Announcement (@awfulannouncing) December 3, 2023
Alabama and the SEC are the proverbial elephant in this room. Nick Saban is the greatest coach of all time, and to me, this year is the greatest coaching job he’s ever done in a season. His team was beaten at home by Texas in Week 2 and doesn’t look much better against a middling USF team next week. But Jalen Milroe continued to make big strides and when it mattered most, he and the Tide made enough plays to knock off a Bulldogs team that had been less dominant in the past two title seasons.
The problem for Alabama — and the SEC — is the partner they will bring: Texas made Alabama beat Tuscaloosa convincingly. That happened, and there was nothing naughty about it.
The Longhorns, 12-1, are the class of the Big 12. There is no second-best team in the Big 12 this year, but Oklahoma State beat Oklahoma, the Texas team stumbled and, as expected, Texas beat the Cowboys Saturday . Remember, this is an Oklahoma State team that went 9-3 and lost by a combined score of 78-10 against South Alabama and UCF. That won’t help Texas’ cause, but have we forgotten that a week ago Alabama barely escaped against an Auburn team that got blown out at home last week by New Mexico State, 31-10?
The bigger issue is with Florida State, the 13-0 Seminoles from the ACC. As we all know, FSU lost star quarterback Jordan Travis two weeks ago. Seminoles backup Tate Rodemaker, who led them to a comeback win over Louisville a year ago when Travis was hurt, didn’t fare well in the regular-season finale at archrival Florida. He also suffered a concussion.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips called it “unfathomable” that Florida State was left out. “Florida State deserves it. College football deserves better.
Statement from him: pic.twitter.com/3BYozQOSog
— Andrew Carter (@_andrewcarter) December 3, 2023
FSU’s third-stringer, Brock Glenn, had a shaky outing in the ACC Championship Game, but the defense dominated. Led by Braden Fiske and Jared Verse, the Seminoles had 14 TFLs and seven sacks and became the first team in five years to hold Jeff Brohm’s offense under 200 total yards. Not coincidentally, the same FSU defense started the year by dominating LSU and the SEC’s biggest star, Jayden Daniels, 45-24, and grabbed the SEC and the No. 1 offense in the nation with its worst performance of the season.
FSU was the only team to hold Daniels under 60 percent passing in a game. Daniels ran for nearly 100 fewer yards (99) against the Noles than when he played for the Crimson Tide.
CFP rankings often turn into arguments about “best” versus “most deserving.” Best is basically the get-out-of-jail free card whenever your team loses or has a bad loss it can’t explain. Like the nonsense of, “Well, Vegas would make so-and-so more than a touchdown favorite against them.” Big But tell that to Washington. The Huskies were nearly a double-digit underdog against Oregon last week, a team they’ve already beaten this year. … Well, the Huskies beat the Ducks again.
I got. The SEC has been the most dominant conference in college football for the past two decades. But this year is not like other years if you notice. It was a down year for the SEC. The ACC actually went 6-4 against the SEC this year. If this is a losing FSU team, I’d say the Seminoles didn’t make it, but they did. Nor should Texas be left out for a team it beat on its own turf.
As colleague David Ubben wrote on Saturday night, games have to matter. What’s the point of playing with them if we try to rationalize them?
(Top image Florida State: John Byrum / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
