Dave George: In clinching BCS title game berth, Florida State shows that it’s scary good again

After seven straight BCS titles, the SEC suddenly is back in business once more, slipping Auburn in under the gun Saturday to play No. 1 Florida State in the national championship game at Pasadena next month.

It’s a little wacky how it happened, this swapping out of previously unbeaten Ohio State for a new challenger, but Jimbo Fisher won’t let his Seminoles buy into the inevitability of anything, especially the mystic destiny of the team that pulled the rug out from under Alabama.

“Me being from Alabama,” said Jameis Winston, who passed for 330 yards and three touchdowns in Saturday’s ACC championship rout of Duke, “I’m going to be excited to play this game. Coach Fisher, having worked there (at Auburn), he’s going to be excited to play this game.

“But we’re not going to get involved in all this SEC-ACC stuff because we done made it to where we are and we’re not done yet. We fear no one. Our opponent has no face, so we don’t care.”

You have to take the man at his word because the Seminoles never do anything but win, and win big, regardless of who gets in their way. Saturday night it was Duke’s turn to get nuked, losing 45-7 in chilly downtown Charlotte and reveling in the fact that a shutout was averted on a stubborn touchdown drive with 61 seconds remaining.

Every other team on the FSU schedule knows the feeling, for rarely has a trip to the BCS title game, even during Alabama’s run of three national titles in the last four years, been so easy.

Florida, for instance, felt lousy about allowing the Seminoles to score 37 points last week, but nobody’s been stingier. Boston College kicked itself for falling two touchdowns short of FSU in September, but nobody’s come closer.

Duke, it must be noted, did some serious hitting in this game, laying out FSU receivers early and often in a scoreless first quarter. That’s what you would expect of a team on an eight-game winning streak.

The Seminoles never slack off, though, on either side of the ball. That’s what Auburn has coming. Whether it turns out to be a shootout like the Tigers’ 59-42 win over Missouri in the SEC championship game or one vicious headbutt after another on defense, FSU is ready and willing to mix it up.

“I know one thing,” said Fisher, who has the Seminoles back in the BCS showcase for the first time since Bobby Bowden got there in 1999. “At Florida State, we’re going to be able to butt you in the mouth. You’ve got to. You can throw it and be skilled but you’ve got to be physical and you’ve got to be nasty.

“You’ve got to play the game clean but this is a man’s game and you have to be that way.”

Ohio State wouldn’t have been such a good match, based on the fountain of points the Buckeyes allowed in the last few games against Michigan and Michigan State. Auburn is ornery enough to push back against the Seminoles, who are accustomed to winning their games by 42 points a game.

Of course, the Tigers don’t have Cam Newton anymore. He’s the quarterback who made them national champions three years ago, and Gene Chizik coach of the year, but there was regime change at Auburn all the same just a couple of years later.

Jimbo doesn’t want FSU’s success to be built on the power of one superstar, in this case Famous Jameis. He wants to build the Seminoles as strong as they were in Bobby’s golden years, when top-four finishes were the norm and national titles always a possibility.

“What I love about what we’re doing right now,” said Jimbo, “is we’re becoming a program. I’ve always said that teams come and go. Programs stand the test of time. …We want to be a program, not a team, and that’s always our goal at Florida State.”

That process is accelerating now because Winston isn’t the only big-time winner here, regardless of his almost certain appointment to accept the Heisman Trophy as a redshirt freshman next Saturday night.

Jimbo’s been piling up talent since his first season as a head coach at FSU in 2010, and even before that, when he served as Bowden’s playcaller from 2007-09. This guy’s just warming up, and high school stars of the highest order, like Winston and Kelvin Benjamin (two touchdowns and 119 receiving yards on Saturday) and Freeman (91 rushing yards against Duke), will keep stoking the fire once this potentially perfect season is finished.

With 13 wins, they already have a school record. The 14th is well in reach, and it would have been so if Alabama or Ohio State was the only other team still standing instead of quirky Auburn.

As for Jimbo, who was an assistant at Auburn from 1993-98, there’s been no fixation on the future at any point this season and that consistency has allowed the Seminoles to steamroll through every Saturday as if nothing else mattered.

He didn’t predict greatness when the Seminoles crushed Clemson 51-14 in October’s major test. He didn’t worry about national rankings when Miami came to Tallahassee in November as No. 7 in the BCS poll. Most of all, he didn’t fret, at least publicly, when Famous Jameis, the key to it all, was the target of a sexual assault investigation.

On Friday, one day after the case was closed without charges being brought against Winston, Jimbo was asked if the mood around his FSU team had changed overnight.

“No, really not,” Fisher said. “It’s the same football team we were before.”