Photo Credit: Orange Bowl
The Orange Bowl is turning out to be one of the most contentious bowl games in a season full of surprises. Of course, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Committee faced an unusually complex scenario in selecting the final four teams to play for the National Championship this year, so the ensuing kerfuffle may have been inevitable, with the only real question being which team would be at the center.
Undefeated Florida State Skipped Over
Florida State’s undefeated football team has had players at every level decline to participate in their Orange Bowl game against the Georgia Bulldogs. Why? Because the CFP Committee declined to invite the Florida State Seminoles to the College Football Playoff National Championship, the tournament designed to crown the National Champion of College Football.
Head of the Committee, Boo Corrigan, justified the decision on the basis that Florida State had to play their final few games without their star quarterback Jordan Travis. Though the team continued undefeated after Travis’s devastating injury in their game against North Alabama on November 18th (a blowout win for the Seminoles), the lack of top-tier performances after that point opened the door for the CFP to slide Alabama into Florida State’s place. This did not sit well with a team that ended every challenge on their schedule with a victory only to be leapfrogged by the one-loss (and SEC Champion) Alabama Crimson Tide.
How Did the CFP Decide Rank?
There were three teams that expected to be represented in two possible spots when the deliberation was done: Texas, Alabama, and Florida. It’s difficult to say that either Texas (which is now the #3 seed) or Alabama (now #4) deserved to be left out of the end-season competition either. Texas’ only loss of the season was to rival #12 Oklahoma on a neutral site, and the team’s schedule also included a trip to Alabama in week two, where they won by double digits. For its part, Alabama’s only loss was to Texas. All three teams were clearly behind undefeated Michigan and Washington in the seeding.
Florida State vs. the Orange Bowl
What has occurred since in the Florida State program is a stream of players refusing to play in the Orange Bowl, a bowl game that is lower than the one they feel they deserve. Not only will the team be missing Jordan Travis, but the Seminoles will now also be without their top three leading pass catchers (draft), their leading rusher (draft), backup quarterback (transfer portal), starting tight end (transfer portal), and a member at every level of their starting defense. The roster has changed from one that won every game on their schedule to one that looks like it would have a difficult time competing in some of the lower divisions of College Football.
As with many of the other bowls, the value of this Orange Bowl has taken a significant hit as players feel it’s not worth participating based on their personal goals for next season.
Observers have identified a few factors in the downfall of the prestige of bowl play:
- The Saturation of Bowl games: Since 2000, the number of bowl games has almost doubled (23 to 41) as sponsors see dollar signs in attaching their brand to an exhibition football game.
- Pursuit of a true National Champion: From 1998 to 2013, College Football used the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system to determine the teams that would play for the National Championship. This system used several different polls from sportswriters, coaches, and non-allied ratings systems to select the teams included in the matchups, using computer algorithms to narrow the best teams down to two. In 2014, that system was replaced by the College Football Playoff, which eliminated the various polls. The removal of these polls also eliminated much of the value of bowl games for teams that were not selected according to the CFP process.
- TV Contracts: Now that so much money is being pumped into the sport from TV Networks, many have complained that teams are being selected based on their watch value rather than their power ranking value.
This final factor is being looked at more closely now, as it is widely believed that Alabama versus number one-ranked Michigan is a better TV product than Florida State, given the current absence of Jordan Travis.
This leads back to the Florida State players taking themselves out of the Orange Bowl. While it is understandable that they would feel insulted that the Committee and media have deemed their accomplishments unworthy of playing in the National Championship, there is also pride in the program to think about—something that these players seem to be missing.
It is an honor to play in the College Football postseason, no matter what form that takes. These players are demonstrating that they are more interested in themselves as individuals than in the program that has provided them the opportunity to play during the season, which is tragic. In all the interviews these players have given, not one has expressed any remorse for not representing his team in this game. All they have communicated is that their priorities have nothing to do with their team—a team that sweat, bled, and exhausted itself over the past year to accomplish an unblemished season.
Could the teams with one loss that jumped ahead of Florida State done the same? Maybe. But we won’t know. We will only know how they perform in the playoff while Florida State players, coaches, staff, and fans watch along with us.