COLUMN: One Week Later, Anger Over Florida State's Unjust Snub Isn't Fading

Our own Austin Veazey takes a stab at putting FSU's disappointment into words.

I'm still not quite sure how to put into words how... disappointing, unfathomable, incomprehensible, maddening, infuriating, annoying, exasperating, and every other word you can think of to describe making me upset... just how cheated I feel with the College Football Playoff Committee's decision to exclude Florida State from the Playoff. 

Now, I'll be completely upfront, and admit something you likely are never supposed to as a "neutral" media member; I'm a Florida State fan. Have been since literal birth. 

Both of my parents are graduates of Florida State. There are pictures of me as a toddler in FSU gear sitting in my mom's lap before FSU games. My childhood revolved around when Florida State football played on Saturdays (and eventually basketball games as well, whenever they played). After going to numerous games in Tallahassee, I felt comfortable enough to call it a second home when it came time for me to choose where I was going to college, choosing Florida State over full-ride academic scholarships elsewhere in the state of Florida. I ended up working for the men's basketball team at FSU for three seasons, right on the upswing of the program when they went from a middling ACC team to one of the best teams in the country for a stretch. Whenever my time comes, and hopefully that's not for a long time, I wish to be buried in Tallahassee. 

My blood runs Gold, and when you break skin, it spills Garnet. I can't change that. 

As the "basketball guy," as I've been called in these parts, I can only relate this feeling from this past Sunday to the 2020 NCAA Tournament being canceled for COVID-19. Two teams that deserved a chance at a national championship never got the chance to because of factors entirely out of their control. Yes, one was a global pandemic while the other was an unjust decision by 13 old people locked in a conference room in Texas. It's also the greatest basketball team I'll likely ever see in my lifetime at Florida State compared to a great football team, but there have been and likely will be better football teams. And I'm the basketball guy; as crazy as it sounds to 99% of Florida State fans, I care more about Florida State basketball than football. Yet, it's the same gut-punch feeling I have for both teams, and especially both groups of seniors. Guys like Trent Forrest in basketball and Kalen DeLoach in football never got to try and climb that mountaintop their senior seasons and it's an unnerving feeling. 

That being said, as unbiasedly as I can, I cannot for the life of me find a way to rationalize Florida State not being allowed to compete for a national championship. 

For what it's worth, my rankings would've been as follows: Michigan, Washington, Florida State, Texas, and Alabama. A team lost, move everybody up since you have another undefeated "Power 5" conference champion in Florida State, and you have to honor Texas' head-to-head win over Alabama for the final spot. That made the most sense. Somehow, Florida State moved down with a team ahead of them losing, and Florida State won against a Top-15 team!

Ever since ESPN and the College Football Playoff Committee announced the final rankings of the season last Sunday around 12:15 EST, I cannot find a way to justify their decision, because the reasons they gave simply weren't good enough. Some will call me a crybaby, some will say "they got the best teams in, deal with it," and some will find a way to try and explain the CFP Committee's decision in a way the Committee themselves couldn't. 

I just do not agree, and I'll go to my grave with this way of thinking. Sue me. 

Florida State Star QB Jordan Travis Finishes 5th in Heisman Trophy Voting

For our entire upbringing, we are taught to go out and win. Winning solves everything. Win and advance. Go strive and be the best in your high school class. In a sense, Florida State just achieved a perfect 4.0 GPA and was bumped from the honor roll, while other teams with a 3.9 GPA were named Salutatorians. 

What's the point of having the exams and the homework, if someone can do those exercises not as well, but gets more of a reward for it in the moment? Forget about whatever study methods they used to achieve it, straight A's are straight A's. 

That's how this feels to me. Florida State went out and achieved a perfect 13-0 season, and were left on the table for two 1-loss teams. Since when was losing a game more valuable than a win? 

The first thing people point to: "The ACC is weak and the SEC is strong!"

I'm not going to sit here and tell you the ACC is better than the SEC. I may sometimes be dumb, but I'm not an idiot. But this isn't the big and mighty SEC college football fans have been accustomed to over the last two decades. The SEC is 7-9 in Power 5 non-conference games this season, including 4-6 against the ACC. The top of the conference is still very good, but the middle and bottom of the league have fallen off completely (do NOT get me started on Tennessee still somehow being a Top 25 team). 

Those 4 wins over the ACC were a good Kentucky win over Louisville, Georgia toughing it out with Georgia Tech, Tennessee beating one of the worst teams in the conference in Virginia, and Ole Miss pulling away LATE in the 4th quarter against Georgia Tech to make it look like a big win, but the Rebels were hanging onto just a 24-17 lead early in the 4th. 

The ACC's wins are slightly more presentable. Florida State started the season with a dominant win over the best offense in the country in LSU. UNC beat South Carolina in Charlotte to start the season in what was supposed to be a hyped-up game, but both teams really failed to meet expectations this year (moreso South Carolina). An average Miami team won against a somehow just as average Texas A&M, but a solid win nonetheless considering the talent on the Aggies' roster. Wake Forest beat Vanderbilt, but I don't know how anyone could consider Vanderbilt a viable power conference football team at this point. Clemson won an ugly slugfest against South Carolina on rivalry weekend. And Florida State beat Florida in the Swamp in the battle of the backup QBs by two scores. Mind you, no one else had won in regulation time in the Swamp this year, despite how inept Florida seemed at times this season. 

By all means, the Florida State win over LSU in Orlando is the best win for either conference over the other. It's also the one common opponent between Florida State and Alabama. So let's compare the two games briefly. 

Florida State won 45-24, really only allowing 17 points to likely Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels before FSU pulled the starters late in the 4th as Daniels threw his only touchdown of the game late. Alabama was up 42-28 at home early in the 4th quarter when Daniels was hit late and knocked out of the game with a concussion, and the game was essentially over from there. 

Daniels' stats vs Florida State: 22/37 (59.4%) for 346 yards, 1 passing TD (again, that one TD was a 75 yarder with less than two minutes remaining on the clock. The game was over), 1 interception, while rushing for another 64 yards. Daniels' stats at Alabama: 15/24 (62.5%) for 219 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT, rushing for 163 yards and another TD. 

You could split hairs, but I'd absolutely argue Florida State performed better against Daniels than Alabama did, and the Crimson Tide had the benefit of playing that game at home. The conferences weren't as far apart as some of the media and fans would want you to believe. Seems like a needle move ever so slightly in FSU's direction, but that's not all there is to argue about. 

The next thing people have pointed to is "Florida State's strength of schedule is 55th while Alabama's is 5th! And Florida State struggled with that schedule!"

I'm not sure any season goes without their struggles, but I digress. Let's take the bait. 

Yes, on paper, Alabama had a tougher schedule. Florida State did all they could to make up for what they've admitted is a conference that will keep them from winning championships, by scheduling LSU and Florida away from home. And won both. By at least two scores. It's not their fault Florida decided to have a losing season, AGAIN, to drag the overall winning percentage down. It's not FSU's fault that the Pittsburgh's and Miami's of the world had down years. They have to play 8 conference games, lined up, played them, won them. 9 if you include the conference championship. At the end of the day, it's a Power 5 conference, so we're told. 

Now let's look at the struggles. For simplicity's sake, we'll define struggles as games that finished as one-score games. They beat Clemson in Death Valley in overtime 31-24, which is now a top-25 team, and FSU is still the only ACC team since Prince passed away and the end of the Obama administration to have won in Death Valley. They hung on to win at Boston College, 31-29, but a decent amount of FSU's team was reportedly dealing with some kind of bug that goes around Tallahassee once a year, and FSU was up 31-10 late in the 3rd quarter. They had chances to close it out in more convincing fashion, but given the state of the team at the time, they were just happy to get out of there with a win. In a rivalry game, they beat Miami 27-20, a game that should've been 27-13 if Kevin Knowles had taken a proper angle to the football and didn't collide with Fentrell Cypress to give Miami a chance. That game wasn't as close as the score looked. 

Yes, there were games that started ugly, like Duke, Pitt, Florida, and Louisville (we'll talk about the latter two games much later), but Duke was a top-20 team at the time before their starter AND backup got hurt at some point in the season, and they faded down the stretch (keep this in mind). FSU still won that game by three scores. FSU had four available wide receivers at Pitt: Ja'Khi Douglas, Vandrevius Jacobs, Darrion Williamson, and a banged-up Destyn Hill. They still threw for 363 yards with those receivers and still won by three scores. 

Alabama did the same conference-wise. They had 8 conference games, lined up, played them, won them. 9 once again if you include the conference championship. Their non-conference? Get ready for a LOADED schedule that will back up their claims: a loss at home by 10 to Texas, and then wins over USF, Middle Tennessee State, and UT-Chattanooga. Great job guys! 

Also, since I haven't seen this noted anywhere, every game against a ranked opponent in the regular season for Alabama occurred at home. Every. Single. One. Texas, Ole Miss, LSU, and Tennessee (I still can't believe they're ranked) were all in Tuscaloosa. Florida State's ranked games? All away from home. Interesting. 

Now, let's look at their struggles. First, they lost to Texas at home by double digits. Nothing more needs to be said about that. A loss is a loss. They somehow let Texas A&M continue to hang around in a game that Jimbo Fisher tried his hardest not to win, but got out of there 26-20. The following week, Alabama was up 24-6 over Arkansas at home in the 3rd quarter, but they got lazy as Arkansas found some offense in the second half and hung on to win 24-21. Then to end the regular season, they needed a 4th and 31 miracle to beat Auburn 27-24, a team that was just blown out by New Mexico State the week prior. I won't count the Georgia game as a struggle because it's Georgia; that's a really, really good football team. And, Alabama was up 10 with under 6 minutes remaining. 

That does not include a game at USF, where the score was 3-3 40 minutes into the football game, and Alabama didn't put the game away with a touchdown to make it 17-3 until there were 33 seconds remaining. USF, a 6-6 American Conference team, whose best win is over 6-6 Rice, went toe-to-toe with Alabama for 54 minutes. And no one seriously talks about it. And Tennessee was up 20-7 at halftime before melting away in the second half. 

If we just start crossing out games that had similar results, Florida State's Boston College is similar to Alabama's Arkansas. FSU's Pitt is similar to Alabama's USF. FSU's Miami is to Alabama's Texas A&M. FSU's Duke is Alabama's Tennessee (though Tennessee was able to have healthy QB play most of the year). And FSU's Clemson is somewhat similar if you squint from a far distance to Alabama's Auburn, though Clemson is clearly a much better team, but both games took some lucky breaks in those games on the road... against Tigers (sack and scoop-'n'-score by Kalen DeLoach and a late missed field goal by Clemson sent the game to OT, not near the miracle that the 4th and 31 was, I know). 

That leaves... oh yeah, a game that Alabama lost. By double digits. 

If the College Football Playoff Committee has decided that the ACC isn't a Power 5 conference anymore, tell us now. Because they're not being treated like one, and it's insane to me other ACC schools haven't been upset about this. 

In the end, FSU finished with the 3rd strength of record compared to Alabama's 4th. Not strength of schedule, which only factors in the teams you play and not the outcome; strength of record, something ESPN devised to account for wins and losses. Somehow, this stat went by the wayside early Sunday afternoon. Again, another slight needle move to FSU's direction. 

And don't think you're off the hook for a single second Michigan. I see you with your same amount of ranked wins as Florida State, and at least FSU didn't have to cheat their way to get there. Penn State and Iowa are in the Tennessee levels of overrated to me; I don't understand the fascination with them whatsoever. What have they done? Who has either of them beaten? Yet somehow, Michigan ended up ranked first and Florida State was fifth. 

Up next; "Alabama played better football down the stretch than Florida State!"

...Alabama needed a FOURTH AND THIRTY-ONE to beat Auburn just three weeks ago. I'm not entertaining this argument. I don't care what Florida State's offense looked like without their star quarterback (again, more on this later), Alabama needed a legitimate miracle against a bad team with every key player healthy. If Auburn catches a punt or plays even just below-average defense on the final play, they win that football game. If the roles are reversed and Alabama was playing with a backup QB, they lose. Again.

Next argument. 

Well, "The goal is to get the best teams in the College Football Playoffs, and Florida State isn't one of the four best teams right now! We don't want a repeat of TCU last year!"

Yes I agree, the goal is to get the four best teams in the playoffs, but how do we determine "best"? If we look at 247's team composite rankings, which determines the amount of recruiting talent, the top four teams would've been Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and... Texas A&M, which is why we don't solve things on paper and games have to be played. 

...But you do know TCU won a playoff game last year, right? Or have we just forgotten Michigan has lost in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff two years in a row? The Michigan that lost as an overwhelming favorite over TCU in the 2022 semifinals and the Michigan that was curb-stomped by Georgia in 2021? 

Every single year in the College Football Playoff has seen at least one non-competitive game. You don't believe me? 2014, Oregon beats FSU 59-20. 2015, both games were blowouts as Clemson beat Oklahoma 37-17 and Alabama beats Michigan State 38-0. 2016, Clemson beats Ohio State 31-0. 2017, Alabama beats Clemson 24-6. 2018, Clemson beats Notre Dame 30-3. 2019, LSU beats Oklahoma 63-28. 2020, Alabama beat Notre Dame 31-14 and Ohio State beat Clemson 49-28. 2021, Alabama beat Cincinnati 27-6 and Georgia beat Michigan 34-11. 2022 was the first year we saw two competitive semi-finals, just to see Georgia absolutely demolish TCU 65-7 in the championship, but that's nothing new either. The average margin of victory in the championship is 13.1 PPG... WITHOUT the Georgia/TCU game. Add that in, it bumps up to 18.1 PPG. Compared to the BCS, where the average margin of victory was 14.6 PPG in the National Championship, it's almost like championship games in college football more often than not end in a large margin. 

So if you're going to argue "we don't want another TCU," are you sure you just don't want another Michigan or another Oklahoma or another Notre Dame? We don't have any way of knowing until the games are played what the result will be. Funny how the competitiveness of the playoffs was never questioned until an SEC team could possibly be left out. 

So let's start with what we know. Texas beat Alabama by 10 in Tuscaloosa. "But that game was in September!" Yes, but the College Football Playoff Committee has said more than once this season it doesn't matter when the games occur, the result is the result. 

“Head-to-head is head-to-head, no matter when the game is played,” selection committee chair Boo Corrigan said on Tuesday, “and that's how we look at it.”

— Heather Dinich (@CFBHeather) December 3, 2023

We know there are three undefeated Power 5 conference champions, something they highly value: Florida State, Michigan, and Washington. We KNOW Texas is better than Alabama by a decent margin proven by what's already happened on the field, given what the College Football Playoff Committee has told us (which is also why this article is mainly slanted as FSU vs Alabama, if we believe that's what it came down to. Florida State should've been ahead of both teams, but if the Committee wanted to put Alabama in, they HAD to put Texas in). And if the goal is to include the four best teams, why, in a year full of great candidates, do we include a team that's already lost to another in the playoff? I get it in years past because there haven't always been four teams deserving of making the playoffs, but we simply don't know how the rest of the teams would play against each other. This year, you could argue between 7 or 8 different teams and have legitimate arguments. 

I'm willing to argue Florida State would've put up a great game against Washington. What Washington wants to do offensively fits right in with what Florida State wants to do defensively, but we're talking about what we know here, so I'll move on. 

We also know that what Florida State's defense has done to some really good offenses has been nothing short of spectacular. They held LSU, the best offense in the country, to half of their average points per game (again, really closer to 1/3rd). They held Louisville, a team averaging 33 PPG on the season heading into the ACC Championship, to 6 points.

In fact, every single FBS team they played this year was held under their average points per game. That's not an accident. In three games, FSU held teams to their lowest scoring outputs of the season (LSU, Syracuse, Louisville), and had two more games where they forced the second lowest (Pitt, Florida). Basically, any time you go up against this Florida State defense, you have a 38% chance of having one of your worst games of the season. I'd take that bet. That's how you win games without your star quarterback: suffocate on defense. Arguably two of FSU's best defensive performances came when they needed it most: at Florida, and in the ACC Championship against Louisville. And last I checked, defense is 50% of football. 

The entire defense allowed 64 total points in the second half... of EVERY game in the regular season. Take away garbage time points when the game was out of hand, and that number drops to 47 points given up by the first-team defense, or an average of 3.6 PPG allowed in the second half. Florida State's defense would've kept them in most games. They were not losing by 30 to anybody. The best offense in the country couldn't even score 30 points on them. And you think Washington, who couldn't even score 20 on Arizona State, puts up 40? Insane. 

Let's just compare FSU's and Alabama's defenses real quick. FSU allowed 15.9 PPG (6th nationally), allowed a 46.8% completion percentage (1st), 170.4 passing YPG (8th), 135.3 rushing YPG (42nd), 305.7 total YPG (14th), had 45 sacks (4th), and 1.3 turnovers forced per game (69th). Alabama allowed 18.4 PPG (17th), a 59.1% completion percentage (42nd), 188.8 passing YPG (23rd), 124.5 rushing YPG (33rd), 313.3 total YPG (18th), had 38 sacks (12th), and 1.4 turnovers forced per game (59th). 

We also know that Florida State was in the top 4 in the AP Poll, the Coaches' Poll, and the projected BCS, while also being ahead of Washington, Alabama, AND Texas in the SP+ Rankings. The only group who doesn't agree that FSU is a Top 4 team based on its current resume is the College Football Playoff Committee.  

Now, what do we not know? 

Would Florida State beat any of the teams currently in the top 8? Everyone is screaming at me "NO, YOU BUFFOON, DO YOU EVEN WATCH FOOTBALL?" and right now I'm the little kid, fingers in his ears going "La-la-la-la-la-la." 

You can throw every point spread in whatever sportsbook you use at me, and all I have to do is point back to last Friday, when Washington, as underdogs by 9.5 points, beat Oregon, when EVERYONE thought the Ducks would walk in that game. You can't play the games on paper, you have to play them on the field, otherwise, why play them at all? You don't know until you know. 

I won't sit here and act like I would bet on Florida State straight up in any of these hypothetical games, but we know that Alabama isn't better than the 3rd best team, we don't know FSU isn't. If the goal is to find the best team, you've completely taken away Florida State's chance to prove they were one of the best teams, while Alabama already had their chance. 

If this is really about the best teams, Georgia would've been ahead of Florida State as well in the final rankings. I can sit here comfortably and say that. As a Florida State fan, I didn't want to potentially play UGA in the Playoffs more than anyone else (and now they'll play a meaningless Orange Bowl where both teams see massive opt-outs, more than likely). But it's not about just simply picking the best teams. 

If the Playoff Committee were to have left Alabama out of the playoffs, you can point and go "Ah, you guys just had to beat Texas at home and you'd be in," and most non-SEC fanboys would accept that. What can you say to Florida State? What could they possibly have done better this season? Nobody knows or has a valid answer. Alabama is 9-4 against the spread this season, while FSU was 8-5, but this sport never has been and never should be a beauty pageant. Line it up, play the games, win the games. That's what it has and always should come down to. Sadly, they changed the narrative, and let media pressure win out. 

Besides, the Committee's rationale for putting undefeated Liberty in a New Year's 6 Bowl as the Group of 5 representative over a subjectively better, more talented, and tougher scheduled SMU was "Liberty just continued to win throughout the year." Is that not what Florida State did?

Even in a time when Florida State lost their starting quarterback, they continued to win. And cover... and win games by multiple scores, I might add.

This is about the best TEAM, is it not? Not the best quarterback or best offense? Or the best conference in recent memory gets the benefit of the doubt? I didn't miss an email, did I?

If it's about the best quarterbacks, then the playoffs should be LSU, Washington, Oregon, and Alabama, since those are the 4 QBs with the highest Heisman Trophy odds. If it's about the best offenses, then the playoffs should be LSU, Oklahoma, USC, and Oregon since those are the four teams that averaged the most points per game, and no one wants to see that playoff. If the difference between Florida State being a playoff team and not being a playoff team is only the quarterback, then Jordan Travis needed to be a Heisman finalist. If it's about the best conference, why even have a playoff and let the conference championships decide your national champion? 

Every other football playoff system has objective means to an end, and I do mean every. The NFL, the FCS, NCAA Division 2, NCAA Division 3... the highest level of college football is the only one that uses subjective opinions, potential TV ratings, and biases to determine who should be allowed to play for a national championship. The BCS was far from perfect, but it rarely got the top two teams wrong, and they only went away from it to avoid scenarios like we saw this weekend. Why couldn't the BCS be the selector for the Playoffs? Why couldn't we have had at least an 8 or 12-team playoff with automatic qualifiers since 1981 like FCS? 

What the FBS and Division 1 College Football have settled into is simply corporate greed and corruption. They didn't put Florida State in because of "potential" TV ratings and they just couldn't bring themselves to do the right thing and leave out the SEC. Did you know, that after all of the conference championship games were played, Florida State had a 97% chance to make the Playoff while Alabama had only a 44% chance, according to ESPN? It's true, look. 

Yet, somehow, ten minutes before the rankings were announced, the odds in Vegas shifted violently and all of a sudden, Alabama was more likely to get in than Florida State. Despite zero games being played from that Instagram post to the announcement of the rankings 12 hours later. Silly me if I think that's a little outlandish. 

There are so many other contradictions from ESPN announcers this week too. Greg McElroy went from saying this four days ago on Andy Staples' show: "If we hold the sanctity of the college football regular season... Florida State won all of their results... Florida State doesn't have a terrible resume at all... but I also acknowledge that they're a team that's undefeated and ultimately I don't care if you win by 1 or 100, if you win the games you deserve credit. So, I think Florida State is absolutely in complete control over their own destiny, which is why Texas needs help. Which is why Alabama needs help," to saying "without a shadow of a doubt, Alabama is among the four best teams, the debate between Alabama and Florida State will rage on and if they really want to tell and continue to tell us it's the four best teams, Alabama should be in" on ESPN's Selection Show. This also comes days after he said "We don't even need to entertain the idea of a 1-loss team potentially jumping them, a la Texas and Alabama. Florida State's in. They're going to take care of business this weekend and they'll be, they deserve to be" earlier in the week as well. 

Kirk Herbstreit's well-documented switch-up on Florida State left my mom so angry, who has watched College GameDay every day for as long as I can remember and has always liked and respected Herbstreit, had to ask me "why is my tweet pink?" because her first ever tweet was at Herbstreit trying to voice her displeasure and she didn't know there was a character limit. She had well exceeded that character limit too. 

And the reasoning Boo Corrigan, an athletic director of a "fellow" ACC school gave the entire world? "It's a different team without Jordan Travis."

Yes. That is correct. Any team would be different without their quarterback. 

Look at Duke. As I mentioned earlier, they were in the top 20 heading into the FSU game, but Riley Leonard re-injures his ankle (he had nothing to do with the early success Duke had in that game) and can't play the rest of the season, and his backup, Henry Belvin IV, gets hurt either in that FSU game or in practice, and never played the rest of the season. Duke, now down to their third-string quarterback, went 2-3 after the loss to FSU. 

The difference? FSU kept finding ways to win even with a second and third-string quarterback. They go into a hostile environment in the Swamp and win. They go into the ACC Championship against a Top-15 team and high-octane offense and WIN. That's what this sport is about. Winning. More than anything else. Especially at the "Power 5" level. 

By the CFP's logic, any team should just stop playing if a star player goes down late in the season. After all, they're not the same team without them. What's the point of playing the games?

By that same logic, the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles, who lost star quarterback Carson Wentz to an ACL injury in Week 14, should've been removed from the playoffs because of uncertainty at quarterback, averaging just 17 PPG over the last three weeks of the season. "It's a different team," they'd say. 

Spoiler, that Eagles team won the Super Bowl, as backup Nick Foles found his groove as the playoffs progressed, despite being underdogs in every game in the playoffs, going from 15 points scored against the Falcons in the Divisional Round, to 31 on the Vikings in the NFC Championship (Minnesota also threw a pick-six), to 41 against the Patriots in the Super Bowl. It's almost like the extra practice time with the first team helped improve Foles' timing and comfort in the offense. Something that could've happened with Tate Rodemaker and Florida State with about a month between the ACC Championship and the Playoffs. 

If Florida State's exclusion was truly about the injury to Jordan Travis, Florida State wouldn't have been 4th heading into conference championship week, and they wouldn't be 5th right now ahead of Georgia. It has to be one or the other. Settling in the middle with zero valid reason is obnoxious and tiring. Florida State would realistically be 7th or 8th if this was about his injury. 

But it's not just about his injury. It's about big daddy ESPN getting their way and not leaving their darling Alabama on the cutting room floor. ESPN is well more invested in the SEC than they are in the ACC. A shame it had to be this way. 

I frankly couldn't give a flying you-know-what right now about the Playoffs going to 12 teams next year. We all knew from the beginning of the 4-team playoff that it could cause issues with 5 Power Conferences, and it should've been 8, to begin with. That does absolutely nothing to fix the travesty against the 2023 Florida State football team. 

It's the most likable Florida State team of my lifetime. Not the best, can't be the most successful since they're not even given the chance to compete for the ultimate crown jewel. But certainly the most likable. I've always wanted Florida State to do well because it's Florida State. But it's nothing like this year. I want Florida State to do well because of every single player in that locker room and who we have representing Florida State now. 

They say the best teams pick up the character of their leaders. You have the confidence and competitiveness of Jared Verse littered throughout. You have the passion and fire of Mike Norvell in every player. But you also have the selflessness and humility of Jordan Travis. And it's so well-balanced and nurtured. 

At the end of 2019, Florida State was at the lowest of lows following Willie Taggart's short tenure. The locker room was a disaster, the culture was non-existent, and we knew it may be a while before Florida State is Florida State again. 

The turnaround started rocky. A 3-6 first season in a COVID year where you couldn't recruit normally, you couldn't have your normal spring and summer practices... everything that is vital to a head coach at his first stop. 2021, FSU starts out with a very competitive game against Notre Dame, but loses the next week to FCS Jacksonville State on the way to an 0-4 start. It felt like Florida State might be in the doldrums forever. But things started to pick up towards the end of the season, as FSU finished the season going 5-3. Just going 5-7 was enough for people to go, "there is something there, but we need to see it." 2022, bang, big win to start over LSU in New Orleans. FSU starts 4-0, but injuries caught up to them over the middle stretch of the season, a stretch seeing them lose three straight to Wake Forest, NC State, and Clemson. We thought we may never escape the hell they were in, but FSU won out from there, going 6-0 in the latter half of the season to give the program their first 10-win season since the Orange Bowl win in 2016. 

It all culminated in a 2023 season with immense pressure. We've all seen the improvements, go out and be the best. Jordan Travis had become an elite dual-threat quarterback, paired with elite weapons at every skill position, with an elite defense on the other side. This was the year. This was the time FSU would rise back to the top of the college football world. 

And it looked like it would be the case. They always rose to the challenge. They beat LSU again, who was now ranked ahead of them, in dominating fashion. They finally got over the Clemson hurdle. Florida State was 10-0 heading into Senior Night, in what was supposed to be a celebration for so many seniors. Players that stuck it out from the beginning like Kalen DeLoach, Dennis Briggs, Renardo Green, and Akeem Dent. Players who came to Florida State via the transfer portal to push themselves and the team over the top like Fabien Lovett, Tatum Bethune, Braden Fiske, and Jarrian Jones. And the player right in the middle of it all was Jordan Travis. He was going to be the one that pulled Florida State out of the depths of hell and atop college football again. 

Sadly, we'll never get to see that chance. Jordan Travis went down with a gruesome lower leg injury against North Alabama. And despite FSU continuing to win, Boo Corrigan and the College Football Playoff Committee used Jordan Travis' injury against the entire team, after parading him on College Gameday and other segments the Saturday of conference championships, just to blame him. He became the scapegoat after he should've been the hero. I still don't know how I'm not supposed to be irate at it, even after writing 6,000 words here. Maybe I should learn from the quarterback. 

How did he respond? Did he use the injury to blame himself for not being there for his team? Did he wish the injury never happened? Did he blame the CFP Committee for not doing what needed to be done?

devastated. heartbroken. In so much disbelief rn, I wish my leg broke earlier in the season so y’all could see this team is much more than the quarterback. I thought results matter. 13-0 and this roster matches up across any team in those top 4 rankings. I am so sorry. Go Noles!

— Jordan Travis (@jordantrav13) December 3, 2023

"I wish my leg broke earlier"

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READ MORE: Former Florida State Running Back Declares For 2024 NFL Draft

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