As winter starts, college football has ended—the regular season finished on December 2, with conference championship games happening. This kicked off the postseason, and it wouldn’t be the same without controversy, and a controversy it was.
In 2014, the College Football Playoff (CFP) replaced the Bowl Season Championship (BCS). The BCS format consisted of the top two teams in the AP Top 25 poll, playing for the national championship. Ten years ago when the CFP replaced the BCS, it comprised the four best teams in the nation. These four teams would be selected by the CFP committee the day after the conference championship games, otherwise known as Selection Sunday. Instead of just making one CFP poll each year, a poll was released every week after a few weeks of the season and continued until Selection Sunday.
On top of picking what teams compete for the national championship, the CFP committee chooses who plays in the prized New Year’s Six Bowls. There are six total New Year’s Bowl Games, with the playoff semi-finals taking two of the six, leaving four left. This year, the four non-playoff games are, the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Capital One Orange Bowl, and Vrbo Fiesta Bowl. The semi-final games include the Rose Bowl Presented by Prudential and the Allstate Sugar Bowl. The committee chooses who plays these games by picking the top teams in their rankings, on top of the highest-ranked Group of 5 teams. The teams playing in these games are as follows, 9 Missouri vs 7 Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl on Dec 29, 11 Ole Miss vs 10 Penn State in the Peach Bowl on Dec 30, 6 Georgia vs 5 Florida State playing in the Orange Bowl on Dec 30, and 23 Liberty, which is the highest ranked Group of 5 team, vs 8 Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Day. As for the semi-final games, 4 Alabama plays 1 Michigan at the Rose Bowl, and 3 Texas meets 2 Washington in the Sugar Bowl, with both games being played on New Year’s Day.
In the last year of the four-team playoff system, the new 12-team playoff system, which is starting next year, couldn’t have come later. Since there are only four teams picked, there are also one or two worthy teams that should make it into the playoffs that are left out. However, there has never been an undefeated Power 5 conference winner left out of the playoffs, until of course this year, the year before the playoff expands. Florida State was this unfortunate team. The Seminoles went 13-0 and won the Atlantic Coastal Conference (ACC). Even with this, they were still left out of the playoffs, and the team that made it in instead of them was no other than the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Crimson Tide had lost one game to Texas, who also made it into the playoffs, but went on a 11 game winning streak, beating the two-time defending champs, who were on a 29-game winning streak, and the CFP’s number 1 team that week, Georgia in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) championship. This of course created a huge controversy. Florida State head coach Mike Norvell said he was disgusted by the committee’s decision to leave them out of the playoffs. Even government officials in Florida have called out the CFP. Additionally, some fans who were mad called out the bias that the CFP has to the SEC. Both Nick Saban, the Alabama coach who has six national titles with Alabama, three during the CFP era, and SEC commissioner, Greg Sankey, said it wouldn’t be the same without an SEC team in the CFP. Shortly after the announcement of the playoff teams, the chair of the CFP committee Boo Corrigan said on ESPN that Florida State was left out because their star quarterback, Jordan Travis, who suffered a broken leg on Nov. 18 against North Alabama, was not going to be playing in the playoff games and their offense won’t be and hasn’t been the same. Corrigan continued to say that the Seminoles are not the same team they were the first 11 weeks of the season.
Since Florida State was left out of the playoffs, they will now be playing a bowl game, as mentioned before, like all the other teams who reached six wins or better, instead of trying to win a national title. Now, playing a bowl game is not that bad, as 21 other teams are competing in a game. They span big-name teams to games with smaller teams playing. Some of those games include 19 Oregon State going up against 16 Notre Dame in the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl on 12/29, 15 Louisville matching up against USC, who failed to meet expectations, in the DIRECTV Holiday Bowl on 12/27, 17 Iowa vs 21 Tennessee in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl on New Years Day, and 14 Arizona and 12 Oklahoma playing in the Valero Alamo Bowl on Dec 28, with bigger games taking place throughout the month. The smaller games occur earlier in the month, and games kick off on Dec 16 with Georgia Southern playing Ohio, with five games following them on that day. Another notable game is Rutgers playing Miami on the 28th in Yankee Stadium, less than 50 miles from the Rutgers campus. Die-hard Rutgers fan, Jagger McCredie’27, said “I’m excited for Rutgers to be back in a bowl game after being bad for so long, and I know they will beat Miami.”
With the season’s end, and the postseason starting, the excitement levels are high every year, and this year’s games will prove the hype once again.
