Even before star quarterback Jordan Travis suffered a season-ending injury two weeks ago, there was a distinct national narrative that an undefeated Florida State could get bypassed for the College Football Playoff because, well, they play in a second-banana conference.
Florida State fans and administrators might bristle at such a perception but, quite frankly, they are largely responsible for it.
I’ll explain momentarily, but first do me a favor and erase from your mind what happened during conference-championship Saturday and instead focus instead on the reputation of the ACC heading into the Florida State-Louisville league title game Saturday night.
I present to you ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum as Exhibit A:
“If [one-loss] Alabama wins the SEC championship over No. 1-ranked Georgia, they’re in,” Finebaum said earlier this week when he described the ACC as a “middling” conference. “[Undefeated] Florida State should not be in this conversation. I know what everyone wants to say, but I don’t really care about the argument that Florida State would be an undefeated Power 5 champion. I mean, so what? You’re going to tell me that Florida State without its best player [Jordan Travis], which struggled against a seven-loss Florida team, should be in over Alabama or Georgia?”
Of course, Finebaum works for the SEC Network and is often more of a publicist for the SEC than he is an analyst. Finebaum fails to acknowledge that it took a miracle 4th-and-31 play in the final seconds for Alabama to beat a 6-loss Auburn team last week. He failed to acknowledge that Alabama struggled to beat an 8-loss Arkansas team and was tied with both 6-loss USF and 5-loss Texas A&M until late in the third quarter earlier this season.
Are we only judging FSU’s unimpressive performances and not Alabama’s?
The reason I bring this up is to illustrate my point about the ACC. Whether Finebaum is an SEC homer or not, I believe him to be the most influential media figure in all of college football. But it’s not just Finebaum who looks down his nose at the ACC; it’s many — if not most — impactful broadcasters and writers in the national media, especially with Clemson’s gradual decline over the last couple of years.
Here’s why I say Florida State is largely responsible for the ACC’s image as the 90-pound weakling of Power 5 leagues: Because the Seminoles have let the whole world know that they can’t wait to leave the poor, pitiful ACC so they join the rich, powerful SEC.
I wrote about this during the offseason when Florida State spent much of its time denigrating its own league. Remember what FSU president Richard McCullough told the school’s board of trustees in a very public meeting this summer?
“We are seeing large media deals … in the Big Ten and the SEC, which in many ways are creating an existential crisis for Florida State University as we will be $30 million per school per year behind in conference distribution. I believe FSU, at some point, will have to very seriously consider leaving the ACC unless there was a radical change to the revenue distribution.”
What McCullough said is certainly true, but what good did it do to air this dirty laundry publicly? All it did was portray the ACC as a second-class league. Can you imagine if the owner of a local Burger King franchise came out and said: “Man, I wish I owned a McDonald’s instead. McDonald’s makes a lot more money than we do and their hamburger meat is a lot better quality, too.”
Who in the hell is going to want to buy a Whopper then?
North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham pretty much told FSU officials over the summer that if the Seminoles are so unhappy with the ACC, then maybe they should just leave. After all, you didn’t hear Texas and Oklahoma denigrating the Big 12 before they announced their departures. You didn’t hear USC and UCLA denigrate the Pac-12 before they announced their departures. They just quietly worked behind the scenes until everything was figured out and then — boom! — they were gone.
“What they [the Seminoles] want to do and how they want to go about doing their business, that is their business,” Cunningham said during a radio interview over the summer. “But it does have an impact on us. And quite frankly, I don’t think it’s good for our league for them to be out there barking like that. I’d rather see them be a good member of the league and support the league, and if they have to make a decision, then so be it.”
It should also be pointed out that FSU and Miami have contributed to the ACC’s image as an inferior league. When Miami joined the league 20 years ago, the belief was that the Hurricanes and the Seminoles would be the Ohio State-Michigan of the ACC and carry the torch for the league. Instead of carrying the torch; they have largely dropped the ball. Miami has never won the ACC championship and has played for it only once. Florida State has won four ACC titles in those 20 years but, until Saturday night, hadn’t played for the conference championship in nearly a decade (since 2014).
At long last, Florida State — under coach Mike Norvell — is back to being nationally relevant.
However, as we move into the future, the Seminoles need to keep winning on the field — and stop whining off it — if they want the ACC’s reputation as a second-rate football league to change.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on X (formerly Twitter) @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen
