It became official Sunday following a 37-35 victory over Georgia Tech in the 2014 ACC Championship on Saturday night. Florida State at 13-0, will be a part of the first College Football Playoff.
Fans in Tallahassee and throughout parts of Florida are hoping for two more victories from the Seminoles and while those feats are attainable, what Florida State has already been able to accomplish this season is nothing short of remarkable.
It’s been well-noted that Florida State did not make much easy in 2014. Despite 13 wins and no defeats, only once all season were the Seminoles able to outscore an opponent in each half of the game.
What the Seminoles were able to do was take every team’s best shot week in and week out and at the end of the day, remain unconquered. After winning the national championship in 2013 and wearing the target of being preseason #1, anything shy of an ACC title and an appearance in the first College Football Playoff would have constituted a disappointing campaign.
While the average margin of victory for FSU in 2014 was less than 12 points as opposed to six touchdowns a season ago, the Seminoles became the first team since Boise State in 2008 and 2009 to head into the bowl season unblemished in consecutive seasons. Florida State is the first team from a major conference to do so since USC in 2004 and 2005.
Close calls were not uncommon for Florida State in 2014 as the ‘Noles notched seven victories of six points or less and rallied from behind at the break on five occasions and from at least two scores down four times. But when the going got tough, Florida State always managed to make one more play than the other team.
With virtually the entire country pulling against the Seminoles, it would have been easy for Florida State to let what’s now a 29-game winning streak slip away and go quietly into the night prideful of what it had accomplished. Instead, the team elected to stand and fight without making excuses that would have been easy to make.
Not only did Florida State wear the bulls-eye of being defending national champions, but the Seminoles were decimated by injuries particularly at positions where they were already young or thin. FSU had to endure the suspension of reigning Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston for the ACC opener against Clemson as well as unfavorable media coverage and an on-campus Code of Conduct hearing that pushed practice back by hours the week of the conference championship.
Whether or not Florida State is able to take down second-ranked Oregon and projected Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota in the Rose Bowl and then either Alabama or Ohio State afterwards remains to be seen, but in a year where so much went wrong both on and off the football field, FSU continued to show a championship makeup that defined the program for better than a decade beginning in the late 1980s.
Making the first College Football Playoff hardly constitutes Florida State playing with house money, but regardless of what happens from here on out, the Seminoles’ feats in 2014 have left FSU fans with plenty to already be proud of.
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