Going into Sunday’s College Football Playoff selection, the committee knew their decision was going to be controversial no matter what. After all, this season had three undefeated Power 5 champions and several deserving one-loss teams. It wasn’t a clear-cut top 4.
That being said, the committee’s justification for leaving undefeated Florida State out of the playoff was silly … as was Dan Orlovsky’s defense of that decision on ESPN.
The selection committee penalized Florida State for losing its starting quarterback Jordan Travis to injury. It didn’t matter that Florida State remained undefeated after Travis went down and held Louisville to just six points in the ACC title game. The committee felt that Travis’ injury made Florida State are worse team (or at least worse than Alabama). But on Monday’s edition of Get Up, Orlovsky went on to claim that the FSU team that went undefeated was not the same team that got left out of the CFP.
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He said:
“But we have to stop saying that this Florida State team went undefeated as a Power 5 conference champion. This team did not. The team two weeks ago with Jordan Travis did. This is a different football team.”
Who did Florida State lose to then, Dan? That’s the problem with the argument. Florida State is an undefeated Power 5 conference champion. It’s the same team. They didn’t lose with Travis, and they didn’t lose without Travis. That would be like saying the Philadelphia Eagles didn’t deserve to make the postseason in 2018 because Carson Wentz (when he was good) got injured. And we all know what happened there.
College football fans weren’t kind to that faulty argument either.