Jimbo Fisher apprenticed under Nick Saban, who once groused that a particular game cost him a week’s worth of recruiting — the game in question being Alabama’s BCS championship victory over Notre Dame. There’s surely some of Saban in Fisher, but this week he gathered his Florida State players to impart a message never delivered by his former boss.
That message: Don’t look forward; look back. (If only for a moment.)
Said Fisher, briefing the media Friday in advance of the Seminoles’ ACC Championship game date with Georgia Tech: “I think you don’t smell the roses enough. We’re in a world of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. I wanted them to understand what they had accomplished because all the great teams that played at Florida State, all the great players … none of those guys ever went undefeated two years in a row. None of them. Ever. And it’s not that we’re trying to brag, but sometimes these rides of success, you never enjoy. They become a pain.”
Florida State has won 28 consecutive games. But to suggest that this “ride of success” has been a glide is to ignore the never-ending furor surrounding Jameis Winston. The reigning Heisman holder spent Tuesday and Wednesday in a student conduct hearing regarding an alleged sexual assault from December 2012. (Winston refused to testify but read a five-page statement.)
“It’s not a distraction at all,” Fisher said. On the contrary, he contended that having to delay practice to accommodate Winston could prove productive. “We may like it better. We may change full-time to a night practice.”
As for Winston, Fisher said: “He’s probably had one of the best weeks of practice he’s had all year.”
Such insouciance would seem ludicrous if not for one detail: Florida State keeps winning. It has trailed at halftime in five games this season but lost nary a one. That the College Football Playoff committee just ranked the nation’s sole undefeated team only No. 4 didn’t jostle Jimbo.
Fisher: “I can’t control what other people think. All I can control is how we play and what we do, and we just keep putting W’s on the board … I don’t waste time worrying about opinions.”
A year ago, someone suggested, FSU was a popular national champ because it ended seven years of SEC domination. This time many neutrals — largely because of the school’s coddling of Winston — view the Seminoles as the Bad Guys.
Fisher again: “I don’t pay attention to it. I don’t read much of it. Again, everybody has opinions.”
The 2013 ’Noles weren’t tested until the BCS title game against Auburn. This year’s team has been tested weekly. To Florida State’s credit, it has passed every one. But there’s widespread belief that the 28-game streak will end against the opponent and in the city where it began Dec. 1, 2012.
That Tech team was 6-6 and represented the Coastal Division in the ACC title game only because Miami banned itself from postseason. These Yellow Jackets are 10-2 and will enter Bank of America Stadium having just beaten Clemson and Georgia. They’ll be the best team FSU has faced since Auburn in Pasadena, and that night the Seminoles fell 18 points behind. If they fall 18 points behind Tech, they’ll be 28-1.
If Fisher implored his players to take a backward glance this week, Tech coach Paul Johnson stole a look ahead. The Jackets are 11th in the playoff rankings, but Johnson sees what a few among us have seen — that No. 11 to No. 4 isn’t too far to go.
“There’s clearly a path that’s there,” he said Friday. “But it’s certainly not going to be there unless you can beat Florida State … You could make a case in our last three games we (would) have beaten three top-20 teams and two top-10 teams. I don’t think anybody else could make that claim.”
The Jackets would need Ohio State and Baylor to lose for that argument to have weight, but still: Think how crazy such a notion would have seemed even 22 days ago. That the team picked fifth in the Coastal will play the team that hasn’t lost in two years with both harboring playoff aspirations — and with a lot of folks believing Tech will win.
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