CFP's tough Florida State snub is the best reminder yet: This sport is a business.
A college football team was left out of the College Football Playoff and now a U.S. senator is involved. Along with a governor and a presidential candidate (who was once the actual U.S. President and who never misses the chance to lay blame, like most politicians, I suppose).
And so, it cannot come as a surprise that Florida State’s football team got jobbed because of … Ron DeSantis?
So says Donald Trump. Just do the math: DeSantis runs Florida; Florida's best college football team got run over by the CFP selection committee; why would it be anyone else’s fault?
RAINER SABIN: Michigan football may not have wanted Alabama. But the Crimson Tide is coming anyway.
We certainly wouldn't want to blame the appetite of viewers who don’t want to see a team that can’t score. Or blame the television execs who understand that essential truth. Or blame the fine committee folks who aim to give their sugar daddies and their fans what they want.
Now hold on a second. Sugar daddies?
Yeah, sugar daddies. That’s the tone of college football's faux-Moral Majority the past 48 hours: The CFP sold out Florida State. Gutted it. Taught our innocent student-athletes that the lessons of college football can never again be found on the field.
No wonder Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida), sent a letter on U.S. Senate letterhead to CFP committee chair Boo Corrigan to — get this — demand transparency. Capitalism is your friend until it’s not, I guess.
Michigan football would probably have liked a word with the committee as well, considering the Wolverines lost out on playing a wounded patsy. (FSU lost its star quarterback in early November and its backup suffered a concussion before the ACC title game.) But how would that have looked when they’d already written the Big Ten demanding due process for their coach?
As the late, great Jon Polito once said, and I’m paraphrasing: It’s a question of ethics. Even fictional mobsters have em’, right?
Polito, who played Johnny Caspar in the Coen Bros.’ mob classic, “Miller’s Crossing,” would’ve recognized the hypocrisy and disingenuous handwringing we’ve endured this news cycle.
Disgusting is a word some have used to describe the CFP snub of FSU. Disturbing is another. Also: embarrassing, travesty, shameful, greedy.
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere, but greed is often a matter of perspective, and a matter of business, and when the CFP selection committee chose one-loss Alabama — and one-loss Texas, for that matter — over unbeaten Florida State, it chose business.
As it should have, as it has made clear for years now in its criteria. Injuries matter, unfortunately. The "eye test" matters. The committee gave itself wiggle room to do exactly what it did Sunday.
Is it fair?
Of course, not. Yet fair isn’t part of the equation. After all, this is a sport that asks its participants to play in a system that rewards factors participants can’t control: geography, demographics, climate, the wealth of an alumni base —there is nothing fair about college football at the highest level.
We love it anyway. Despite the built-in inequity. Anyone and everyone who watches or cares about college football understands this.
Still, Scott found the temerity to write that the “main issue is the justified perception of an unfair system that has wrongly disregarded the known strengths of an undefeated team over the speculated impact of losing a single player.”
Note the use of “unfair system.” And “speculated impact.”
Speculated impact?
How about what Florida State has looked like since quarterback Jordan Travis was lost to injury? Where is the speculation in that?
Look, it’s heartbreaking for the Seminoles. They looked like a playoff team until he went down, and then grinded their way to an undefeated season without him.
But leaving out the Seminoles isn’t disgusting or embarrassing. It doesn’t violate the code — or spirit — of competition. Not in a sport built on branding and style points.
If anything, choosing Alabama over FSU upheld the sport’s spirit, for better and for worse; until the advent of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998 (the CFP's predecessor that lasted about a decade and a half), the champion was picked by … writers? (And coaches, but still....)
Yes, picked. Chosen. Selected. Whatever. The same thing happened Sunday. This process is why Michigan split its national title in 1997. One group of folks (the media) thought the Wolverines looked better. Another group of folks (the coaches) thought Nebraska looked better.
Next year, when the CFP expands to 12 teams, an undefeated team isn’t going to be left out. At least from the Power Five ranks. But then there will be a 13th team that believes it is deserving. Maybe a 14th, too.
Shoot, Liberty went 13-0 this season, too, and merely got a Fiesta Bowl date with 10-2 Oregon. Where is the outrage for the Flames?
There isn’t any, because they don’t look like they belong on the same field as Alabama. Or Michigan. Or Washington. Or Texas.
Lately, neither did Florida State. It’s really that simple. And it’d be helpful if we remembered this isn’t new.
It’s a tough break, no doubt. A devastating one, even, if you love FSU. But the college football playoffs aren’t just there to determine a champion. It’s there to sell hundreds of thousands of tickets and draw tens of millions of viewers, and the committee that oversees it made the decision with this in mind.
This is a business. Business isn’t always fair. The politicians grandstanding about the decision understand this better than most. But then again, they've been in a competition for style points far longer than anyone in college football has.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Florida State lost out in CFP where it mattered: In business
