The first Sunday blast came from Florida State’s athletic director. Michael Alford had seen his unbeaten ACC championship team demoted — the Seminoles were No. 4 in the College Football Playoff’s next-to-last rankings — to make room for two once-beaten teams. Remember the CFP’s original slogan, “Every Game Counts”? This committee decided 13 games didn’t.
Twenty minutes later, the second blast arrived. ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips decried the CFP’s addled work, calling it “unfathomable,” saying the Seminoles’ “exclusion calls into question the selection process and whether the committee’s own guidelines were followed.”
Phillips wrote “my heart breaks” for Florida State. There’s a chance one program’s broken heart leads to the breaking of the venerable ACC.
The Seminoles’ immediate reaction was sorrow. It will, assuming it hasn’t already, turn to anger. Last summer, Florida State expressed its displeasure with the money ACC members were making. Now FSU has reason to ask, “Why should we stay in a league that has so little power that going 13-0 left us behind Texas and Alabama?”
Texas and Alabama will soon be mates in the SEC, the haughtiest of all fraternities. Michigan and Washington, the playoff’s top two seeds, will be part of the mathematically incorrect but politically mighty Big Ten. We’d been saying that, come 2024, the world of college sports — meaning college football, which is all that counts — will become the realm of two superpowers. It’s still 2023, and we’re already there.
It was shocking — which can also be read as “not at all shocking” — how little sympathy ESPN’s many commentators had for FSU. The common reaction: “We feel for them, but hey, they couldn’t beat Alabama even with a healthy Jordan Travis.” For the record, ESPN/ABC is the CFP’s rightsholder. It’s also about to become the sole home of the Just-Means-More conference. (Bye, CBS!)
(Only Booger McFarland expressed the outrage the moment demanded. Also for the record, McFarland played at LSU of the almighty SEC. A stern letter of rebuke will be placed in his corporate file.)
Tut-tutters will insist that the wailers should just shut up and wait till next year. There’s a 12-team playoff! There’ll be a place even for the mottled fruit of lesser leagues! But let’s check the CFP’s final Top 25. Of the first 12, six are/will be SEC reps; five more are/will be Big Tenners. In the new world, the ACC and Big 12 will be allotted slots for their champs. That might be all they’ll get.
Making Phillips’ screed doubly noteworthy was that committee chair Boo Corrigan is the AD at N.C. State. The fifth media question to Corrigan on Sunday: “What do you say to people who say you rewarded Liberty (with a New Year’s Six bowl over SMU) for going undefeated despite the strength of schedule and did the opposite for Florida State?”
From Corrigan’s nonsensical response: “Good question ... Liberty is averaging 500 yards a game.”
The ACC began this season in a precarious place. Its response to the latest round of conference-poaching was to rustle up Stanford, Cal and SMU. Florida State’s Alford was already making noises about wanting out. Now a committee led by an ACC elder has insulted the genteel league in a way even Jim Boeheim — “Greensboro has no value” — never did.
In the CFP Top 25, Louisville of the ACC was ranked third-highest among three-loss teams; N.C. State — Corrigan’s team, for Pete’s sake! — was sixth-highest among three-loss teams, and Clemson was fourth-highest among four-loss teams. If I’m Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, I’m thinking, “This year it’s FSU. Next year could be me.”
Phillips had to say something Sunday — to his credit, he said it well — to show the ACC commissioner is prepared to fight for his membership. This might, alas, be a fight he cannot win. A blundering committee lent proof to everything ACC doomsayers were thinking: With the Pac-12 no more, this is the least among power conferences. Put another way, it’s powerless.
Florida State is set to play Georgia on Dec. 30 in the Orange Bowl. By then, I’m guessing FSU will have announced it’s seeking a new home.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The Seminoles beat everybody they played, and it wasn’t enough.
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