Florida State Gets Hammered In Orange Bowl, And Fans Wrongly Claim This Validates CFP Committee

Florida State lost in horrendously ugly fashion to Georgia in the Orange Bowl, which many fans believe is justification for the final College Football Playoff rankings.

The fifth-ranked Seminoles got destroyed by the sixth-ranked Bulldogs 63-3 roughly one month after missing out on a chance to play for a national championship. Things got so bad, Georgia wide receiver Ladd McKonkey was pulling off backyard-type plays with ease.

It will be a day that lives in infamy for the Seminoles’ storied football program.

Due to the nature of the loss, and the raging debate regarding FSU’s playoff exclusion, countless fans concluded that this was foolproof evidence that the Seminoles didn’t belong in the semifinals

But they’re all wrong, and not a shred of their arguments holds any validity.

Fans Reaction To The Florida State Game Make No Sense

The CFP Committee said the main reason Florida State didn't get a playoff spot was that starting quarterback Jordan Travis suffered a season ending-injury. In their estimation, his injury nullified a 13-0 season in which the team won a Power 5 Conference title. 

After seeing the Orange Bowl play out, fans thought this proved the committee right.

But that couldn't be further from the truth.

Here’s a brief list of star Seminoles players who opted out of the game.

That’s nearly all of their primary impact starters, which means today’s Florida State team was at best a low-level second-string team. Throw in the fact that Georgia fielded nearly all its starters, and the disparity of talent couldn’t be more evident. If these fans had high expectations for Florida State’s performance today, they were clearly not reading the situation properly. 

But even if the Seminoles fielded all of their players, they claimed that team would not belong in the semifinals.

Now look, I’m not saying that Florida State would have beaten Michigan in a hypothetical semifinal. But I’d be willing to bet that a Seminoles squad with all of its starters available (even without Jordan Travis) wouldn't have lost by more than a touchdown.

Still, more fans claimed that the result showed Georgia belonged in the CFP. But once again, nothing could be further from the truth

Georgia is not in the semifinals because it failed to take care of business in the SEC Championship game against Alabama. If the Bulldogs truly were one of the best teams in the country, beating the then 8th-ranked team in what was essentially a home game should have been an easy task. Instead, their Tuscaloosa Tormentors ended their season in dramatic fashion. They proved they did not belong.

Furthermore, beating a team with essentially no first-string players shouldn’t make you feel great. If you win by 60 with a loaded Seminoles team, then that’s a different discussion. But this doesn’t prove anything about their case for a chance at this year’s national title.

In short, we learned nothing one way or another about Florida State's or Georgia’s status as a top-4 team. Robert Griffin III provided the best analysis on what happened in today's matchup.