Tallahassee is not OK. 'Robbed' of a college playoff berth, FSU family crushed

There are certain topics at Frothers Daughter that can incite froth beyond the lattes. This week there is most definitely a favorite at the mobile coffee trailer across from Florida State University: An epic snub of the local football team.

“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 Florida State biology major and data obsessive.

The team began the weekend with an almost assured berth in the playoffs. They had done the work. The Seminoles had won the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship, capping a 13-0 season. And yet. On Sunday, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee left them in the dust without a playoff slot – pushed aside in favor of one-loss Texas and Alabama. 

“Numbers don’t lie. They never lost. There’s some crazy bias going on,” she added. 

What goes without saying perhaps is that in the South, college football is like religion. By at least one count, attendance at college games in the region outstripped other regions by almost double. The author of that study, Cameron Chase Cundiff, a Samford University student at the time in 2018, concluded that, "The best football played at the top level of college football is consistently played in the South.

"And people will always flock to the best," he wrote.

And so it is that news of the Florida State snub, even to the benefit of other Southern schools, was particularly hard to swallow in Tallahassee.

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.’ ” 

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The turn of events has turned Tallahassee into something of a land of broken dreams. The school had its perfect record – just like playoff-bound Michigan and Washington. An undefeated Power 5 champion. Now, it's the first ever such champion left out of the playoffs, as ESPN noted, ostensibly because FSU starting quarterback Travis Jordan suffered a season-ending injury, according to Boo Corrigan, chair of the selection committee.  

It's at odds with the “core essence of sports. The possibility of somebody unknown doing something great,” lamented Matt Thompson, one of the owners of the Madison Social, a nightclub and restaurant across from Doak Campbell Stadium, where FSU plays. 

Thompson said the decision provoked a range of emotions, including 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. 

“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. 

He said Tallahassee thinks of FSU's football players as members of the family. The town feels as if the college football selection committee has denied their family the recognition it deserves, he said. 

Coach Mike Norvell, who reestablished a winning tradition after coach Jimbo Fisher defected to Texas A&M in 2017, did not candy-coat his feelings.

"I am disgusted and infuriated with the committee's decision today to have what was earned on the field taken away because a small group of people decided they knew better than the results of the games," Norvell said in a statement. "What is the point of playing games?"

Alex Scott is a Michigan fan. But he's also the executive pastor at City Church, who counts many FSU fans among his flock. 

“I know it’s just football, a game," he said. "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, wearing a Michigan hat and talking football in a coffee shop, did confess to being somewhat relieved that the Wolverines and Seminoles won’t be facing each other in the playoffs. 

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 going up 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.”