As most know by now, undefeated and defending national champion Florida State dropped a spot to third on Tuesday night in the latest College Football Playoff top 25 behind 9-1 Oregon. At this point, the flip-flop is just a minor shake-up and most believe that an undefeated Florida State team would certainly be a part of college football’s first playoff, but the newly-formed committee isn’t shaping up to be much better than the BCS.
If the season ended today, Florida State would still be part of the playoff. The difference between #2 and #3 would ultimately just determine which sideline the Seminoles would be on and which colored top Oregon wore as part of one of its 678,439 uniform combinations, but the flip-flop is unjustified.
Sure, the Pac-12 is a better conference than the ACC. Few will argue that and the Ducks have looked far better against their three ranked opponents than Florida State has against its. There is one major difference however. Oregon has a LOSS — something FSU has not had to endure in nearly two years.
On Thursday, October 2nd, the Ducks were defeated AT HOME against Arizona. Now, Arizona has certainly shown to be a very good football team and head coach Rich Rodriguez deserves a ton of credit for what its been able to accomplish this year.
Coming into that game however, Arizona was hardly clicking on all cylinders. The Wildcats had just defeated California on a Hail Mary as time expired to avoid losing at home. In the two games prior, Arizona had a 3-point win at Texas-San Antonio (currently 2-7) and a 35-28 victory at home over Nevada.
Since then, the Ducks have looked much better as quarterback Marcus Mariota is almost everyone’s Heisman Trophy front-runner. Oregon easily handled UCLA on the road following its loss and pulled away from Utah in the fourth quarter this past weekend in Salt Lake City.
Florida State has certainly had its flaws in 2014, but the Seminoles have been unfairly judged against what they did last season in one of the more dominant campaigns in recent college football history. 25 times in the last 25 games, the Seminoles have lined up against an opponent and 25 times, Florida State has added a tally to the win column.
Unless it petitions to leave the conference this very minute, there is nothing that Florida State can do about the strength of the ACC. But when comparing non-conference resume’s however, Oklahoma State, Notre Dame and eventually Florida looks pretty good next to South Dakota, UNLV and Michigan State.
For years, folks were critical of the Bowl Championship Series. After being two heavily hung on strength of schedule and computer polls, the formula was eventually changed to be based primarily on the human element as human polls made up two-thirds of the standings. In a new system made entirely of human voters, the process for deciding college football’s national champion somehow seems to be getting worse.
As far as the traditional human polls are concerned, they look very different from the current College Football Playoff top 25. Florida State holds the advantage over Oregon by a wide margin in both polls. In the Amway Coaches Poll, the only poll where Oregon has a first place vote, the Ducks are not even in the top 3.
To justify its mind-numbing decision, the selection committee cited overall body of work as its reasoning for flipping FSU and Oregon. The Ducks have three wins over teams currently ranked its top 25 as compared to Florida State’s two and by wider margins of victory.
But if Florida State is to be punished for playing close games, Oregon should as well. The Ducks had to eek out a 38-31 victory over a Washington State team that’s currently 3-7 in a contest that was tied with under six minutes to play.
The Seminoles have not allowed a team with a current losing record to stay closer than 14 points and that came this past weekend against Virginia, when Florida State (rightfully) sat on the ball in the red zone with just under two minutes to play.
Most seem to believe that Oregon jumping Florida State will have little consequence on the Seminoles’ national championship aspirations, but who’s to say it stops here? Most agree that the Big XII and SEC are also better conferences than the ACC. What if TCU, Baylor and Alabama all have one loss? Would that make those schools more deserving than an undefeated Florida State team that played nine games against teams from the maligned ACC?
Granted, this is not the final poll. The hated BCS however, never had a 1-loss team ranked higher than an undefeated team from its major conference in its final standings. Was this what the NCAA had in mind when it abandoned that system?
Though most applaud college football’s implementation of a playoff system, the committee it appointed has already disappointed. Whether or not the committee is able to get the nation’s best four teams into the playoff field remains to be seen, but if the goal was to make the BCS seem competent, it’s shaping up to be an instant success.
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