The annual national championship basketball tournament is. indeed, “madness.” But the 2023 national collegiate football playoff is insanity.
Expanded playoffs can’t get here soon enough.
The final CFP ratings were announced Sunday, and unbeaten Florida State, champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference, was not one of the four teams chosen to compete for the title.
Two-time defending national champion Georgia wasn’t either, even though the Bulldogs ran a 12-game regular-season table before losing to Alabama in the Southeastern Conference championship game by three points.
Nor were the Ohio State Buckeyes, whose only blemish against 11 victories was a loss to top-ranked Michigan at the Big House in Ann Arbor.
It’s hard to argue against Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverines, who began and ended the season without their lightning-rod coach, who was suspended for a total of six games. They defeated East Carolina, UNLV, Bowling Green, Penn State, Maryland and Ohio State without their coach on the sidelines, and beat a total of 13 opponents.
Or to disagree with including the Washington Huskies, who beat Oregon not once but twice, each time by a field goal, en route to a perfect season and the final championship of the once-proud PAC 12’s existence as we’ve known it.
The rub comes with the other two finalists, Alabama and Texas.
Each has one loss, Alabama 34-24 to those Longhorns in the second week of the season, and Texas 40-14 to Kansas, whose Jayhawks are destined for something called the Guaranteed Rate Bowl the day after Christmas against UNLV.
The reasoning—I can’t call it logic—behind leaving Florida State out of the playoff is uncertainty at quarterback. Starter Jordan Travis has a broken leg and is out for the season, and his backup, Tate Rodemaker, is recovering from a concussion that kept him out of the Seminoles’ 16-6 victory over Louisville in the ACC title game last weekend.
“Florida State is a different team than it was the first 11 weeks,” CFP selection committee chairman Boo Corrigan said, alluding to FSU’s uncertainty under center. “ . . . the committee voted Alabama four and Florida State five.”
“I wish my leg broke earlier in the season so y’all could see this team is much more than the quarterback,” Travis said on social media.
Florida State Athletics Director Michael Alford lambasted the selection committee in a written statement.
”The committee failed college football today,” he said., adding: ”Wins matter. Losses matter. Those that compete in the arena know this.”
He could have added that Alabama got in by winning, while Florida State was left out, despite winning.
”The fact that this team has continued to close out victories in dominant fashion facing our current quarterback situation should ENHANCED our case to get a playoff berth EARNED on the field,” Alford said.
“Instead, the (playoff selection) committee decided to elevate themselves and ‘make history’ . . . by excluding an undefeated Power 5 conference champion for the first time since the (national championship game) era began 25 years ago.
“They chose predictive competitiveness over proven performance, subjectivity over fact.”
Saying he was “disgusted and infuriated,” FSU coach Mike Norvell asked:
“What is the point of playing games . . . What was earned on the field (was) taken away because a small group of people decided they knew better than the results of the games.”
Florida State will play Georgia in the Orange Bowl December 30—a matchup that will rival Washington vs. Texas in the Sugar Bowl and Michigan vs. Alabama in the Rose Bowl— the two playoff semifinals.
In fact, what are identified as the “Selection Committee Bowl Games” make a strong case for the 12-team playoff that’s supposed to begin next year.
Besides Florida State-Georgia, they include:
Oregon vs. unbeaten Liberty in the Fiesta Bowl;
Penn State vs. Ole Miss in the Peach Bowl; and
Ohio State vs. Missouri in the Cotton Bowl.
Alford made one comment that I disagree with.
“For many of us, today’s decision by the committee has forever damaged the credibility of the institution that is the College Football Playoff,” he said.
To the contrary, the exclusion of Florida State will stoke the clamor for an expanded playoff, one that won’t omit a team as deserving as the ‘Noles.
What better way to build interest and anticipation for what’s to come than to light a bonfire of controversy and indignation the year before?
Denny Dressman is a veteran of 43 years in the newspaper business, including 25 at the Rocky Mountain News, where he began as executive sports editor. He is the author of 15 books, nine of them sports-related. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.