Subsequent 12 months, all this Faculty Soccer Playoff arguing might be moot with the CFP increasing to 12 groups. Arguing over Nos. 3, 4 and 5 may be very completely different than 10, 11, 12 and 13. You lose your advantage of the doubt while you lose video games. Even within the SEC.
However this 12 months continues to be a four-team discipline, and with so many variables factoring into the choice, there’s a lot to dissect. And to state it plainly: the Faculty Soccer Playoff committee obtained it unsuitable. Faculty soccer has, or not less than it used to have — up till proper now — the very best common season in sports activities as a result of the video games mattered most. We’ve got a smaller pattern dimension on this sport than in every other.
To go away out an undefeated 13-0 Florida State workforce in a Energy 5 convention was the unsuitable choice.
Michigan and Washington, each undefeated with top-10 wins, have been the straightforward ones. The issue for the Faculty Soccer Playoff committee was that there have been three groups with official arguments for the ultimate two slots.
Sorry, Georgia. You didn’t win your convention title, and on this format, that has to rely for one thing.
Booger McFarland isn’t pleased that Alabama obtained into the CFP over an undefeated Florida State workforce.
“To me, it is a travesty to the game…One workforce has a loss, and that is Alabama. One does not in Florida State.” pic.twitter.com/3rhBvvpT1D
— Terrible Saying (@awfulannouncing) December 3, 2023
Alabama and the SEC are the proverbial elephant on this room. Nick Saban is the best coach of all time, and to me, this 12 months was the best teaching job he’s ever completed in-season. His workforce obtained whipped at residence by Texas in Week 2 and didn’t look any higher combating a middling USF workforce the next week. However Jalen Milroe saved making massive strides and when it mattered most, he and the Tide made sufficient performs to knock off a Bulldogs workforce that wasn’t wherever close to as dominant because it was in its earlier two title seasons.
The issue for Alabama — and the SEC — is the companion they’re about to herald: Texas did beat Alabama convincingly in Tuscaloosa. That occurred, and there was nothing fluky about it.
The Longhorns, 12-1, have been the category of the Huge 12. There wasn’t a second-best workforce within the Huge 12 this 12 months, however Oklahoma State beat Oklahoma, the workforce Texas stumbled towards and, as anticipated, Texas hammered the Cowboys Saturday. Keep in mind, this was an Oklahoma State workforce that went 9-3 and had misplaced by a mixed rating of 78-10 towards South Alabama and UCF. That wasn’t going to assist Texas’ trigger, however will we simply overlook {that a} week in the past Alabama barely escaped towards an Auburn workforce that obtained blown out at residence the week earlier than by New Mexico State, 31-10?
The larger difficulty was with Florida State, the 13-0 Seminoles from the ACC. As everyone knows, FSU misplaced star quarterback Jordan Travis two weeks in the past. The Seminoles’ backup Tate Rodemaker, who had led them to a comeback win over Louisville a 12 months in the past when Travis had gotten harm, didn’t look nice within the regular-season finale at arch-rival Florida. He additionally sustained a concussion.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips calls it “unfathomable” that Florida State was overlooked. “Florida State deserved higher. Faculty soccer deserved higher.”
Assertion from him: pic.twitter.com/3BYozQOSog
— Andrew Carter (@_andrewcarter) December 3, 2023
FSU’s third-stringer, Brock Glenn, had a shaky outing within the ACC Championship Sport, however the protection was dominant. Led by Braden Fiske and Jared Verse, the Seminoles had 14 TFLs and 7 sacks and have become the primary workforce in 5 years to carry a Jeff Brohm offense underneath 200 whole yards. Not so coincidentally, that very same FSU protection started the 12 months by dominating LSU and the SEC’s largest star, Jayden Daniels, 45-24, and held the SEC and the nation’s No. 1 offense to its worst efficiency of the season.
FSU was the one workforce that held Daniels underneath 60 p.c passing in a sport. Daniels ran for nearly 100 yards much less (99) towards the Noles than when he performed the Crimson Tide.
The CFP rankings usually devolve into an argument over “greatest” versus “most deserving.” Greatest is normally the get-out-of-jail free card each time your workforce loses or has a foul loss that it might probably’t clarify. Just like the nonsense of, “Effectively, Vegas would make so-and-so greater than a landing favourite towards them.” Nice. However inform that to Washington. The Huskies have been nearly a double-digit underdog towards Oregon final week, a workforce they’d already overwhelmed this 12 months. … Effectively, the Huskies beat the Geese once more.
I get it. The SEC has been probably the most dominant convention in school soccer for the previous 20 years. However this 12 months hasn’t been like these different years in case you’ve been paying consideration. It’s merely been a down 12 months for the SEC. The ACC really went 6-4 towards the SEC this 12 months. If this was a one-loss FSU workforce, I’d say the Seminoles didn’t earn their means in, however they did. Texas shouldn’t have been overlooked both for a workforce it beat in its personal place.
As colleague David Ubben wrote Saturday evening, the video games need to matter. What’s the purpose of taking part in them if we’re going to try to rationalize them away?
(High photograph Florida State: John Byrum / Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Photos)
