Fans devastated after CFB rejects Florida State football teams from playoffs
The epic snub of their football team Sunday by the College Football Playoff committee was the talk of the line Monday morning at the Frother’s Daughter Mobile Coffee trailer, across the street from the Florida State University campus.
FSU went into the weekend holding down the final spot in the playoff field, but after winning the ACC title game and completing a 13-0 season, they were pushed aside by one-loss Texas and Alabama and excluded from the playoffs.
“The most eloquent word besides BS is this is very, very, very unfair, very unjust, very upsetting and really devastating to all of us,” said Bryn Smith, a biology major who is very focused on data.
“Numbers don’t lie. They never lost. There’s some crazy bias going on,” she added.
Some suspect Florida State was pushed out of the playoff field to make room for so-called “blue blood” schools Texas and Alabama. Schools with a longer football tradition than FSU, which started playing in 1948.
“We were just screaming at the television,” said Grace Greenough. “I had my brother in Tampa and friends in Miami all calling saying, ‘You guys are being robbed.’ ”
FSU’s exclusion from the playoff field turned Tallahassee into a land of broken dreams. The Seminoles, like playoff-bound Michigan and Washington, is a perfect 13-0 and a so-called Power 5 champion.
But unlike the B1G 10 and PAC 12 champs, FSU will not play for a national championship, because FSU starting quarterback Travis Jordan suffered a season-ending injury, according to Boo Corrigan, chair of the selection committee.
Matt Thompson said the decision provoked a range of emotions that included laughing at the absurd logic that blames FSU’s drop in the polls on an injured player, despite the team posting two wins without him.
Thompson is one of the owners of the Madison Social, a nightclub and restaurant across from Doak Campbell Stadium, where FSU plays.
He said the committee’s decision is at odds with the “core essence of sports," which he said is "the possibility of somebody unknown doing something great.”
He said Tallahassee thinks of FSU's football players as members of the family and the town feels as if the CFB has denied FSU the recognition it deserve.
It’s been a rough decade for the team and fanbase highlighted by the 2017 defection of coach Jimbo Fisher to Texas A&M.
But instead of celebrating Coach Mike Norvell’s reestablishing a winning tradition, both the fan base and the team are demoralized by the CFB’s decision to exclude them from the national championship tournament.
“It is a feeling of hopelessness that you hate. A feeling that everything you believed in since you were a kid when it comes to sports, doesn’t matter. It’s painful to know that victories don’t matter,” Thompson said.
Michigan fan Alex Scott is the executive pastor at City Church, who counts many FSU followers among his flock.
Wearing a Michigan hat and talking football in a coffee shop, he confessed relief at the Wolverines and Seminoles not facing each other in the playoffs but sees many upset at how the football season will end.
“I know it’s just football, a game. But for so many people, and I think specifically coaches and players, there is a sense that something was taken from them. I’m sitting here going, how the heck is Florida State not in? It’s like what more do you want from them,” Scott said.
Edgar Gamez paused from a chess game at an outdoor cafe a mile up the hill from the state capital to say the committee’s decision was “pretty disrespectful” to the team and city.
Gamez, co-owner of Maria Maria on North Monroe Street, said Tallahassee is a very competitive city that loves to compete against the biggest and best teams in the country.
“And we’ve been robbed of that opportunity, big time,” Gamez said. “We’re all about opportunities, but here, we were not given it.”
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee feels robbed as CFP excludes FSU from football playoffs
