LOS ANGELES -- Florida State is the only team in college football that has won all its games. Yet 12 people gathered in a room over eight weeks and determined that simply is not good enough to be the No. 1 team in the country.
Has this sparked outrage in the locker room, the type that leads to unbridled motivation to prove the College Football selection committee wrong? If it has, nobody on the Florida State side is saying. Perhaps the No. 3 Seminoles will show us instead, when they face No. 2 Oregon on Thursday in the Rose Bowl.
After all, that is what this team seems to do best.
“It’s not about the committee,” Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher said. “If we’re having to worry about trying to prove ourselves ... Listen, we’re in the College Football Playoff. We’re one of the most elite teams in the country. It’s about us just playing well now and taking care of our business.”
Fisher had a slightly different viewpoint in November, when he said, “I thought the name of the game was to keep winning.” He got defensive, and rightfully so. Florida State was never once ranked No. 1 in the committee’s weekly Top 25, despite its unblemished record.
Each week, committee chairman Jeff Long trotted out a different reason and made the rationale behind the rankings all the more cringe-worthy to Seminoles fans with phrases such as “eye test” and “game control.”
Each week, Fisher was asked to react. Arguing proved futile.
Rather than make any more statements about rankings or the committee, Florida State decided to collectively shrug its shoulders at the mere mention of disrespect.
“It could definitely be an opportunity to prove people wrong, but that’s the committee’s job,” defensive tackle Derrick Mitchell Jr. said. “That’s what they felt. But no matter what, if we were 1 or 4 or 3 or 2, we still make the playoffs. It’s not like we get home-field advantage or anything. We’re still playing at a neutral site, so we just have to go out there and play Florida State football, and the rest will take care of itself.”
The contrast between this season and last season is striking. Headed into the BCS national championship game against Auburn, Florida State was unbeaten and the unquestioned No. 1 team in the nation. In fact, it stood in a position similar to Oregon's today.
Florida State needed to win the national championship for a host of reasons: to break the SEC domination, to bring the program full circle, to prove once and for all the ACC was capable of winning it all.
Yet the Seminoles never got the benefit of the doubt usually afforded to SEC national champions, nor did the ACC, which continues to be derided for being “weak” despite a host of stats that disprove that knee-jerk-reaction.
Of course, the biggest difference between the rankings in 2013 and the rankings in 2014 is the selection committee, tasked with determining the top four teams in the country. The group saw the warts in Florida State -- the close wins, the late comebacks -- and decided winning teams are not allowed to have warts.
Winning teams from the ACC, that is. Because Alabama and Oregon each have one loss -- but ended with better rankings.
“My only question in the way they rank these teams is if you win every single game, like Florida State, if you’ve won every game and especially haven’t lost a game in two years, how are you not the No. 1 team?” Boise State coach Bryan Harsin said, echoing the comments Fisher made in November.
It is a question many continue to ask. But Florida State is done trying to figure out the answer.
“They’re going to say what they want to say about us,” running back Karlos Williams said. “They’re going to have their own perception of us. We’re just here to win football games. It’s not up to us to rank ourselves. I believe we’re the best team in the country, but to them, we’re the third-ranked team in the country, so we have to take that, go with it, just continue to play good football and go out there and try to beat Oregon.”
Florida State has beaten everybody in its path and has grown its legion of naysayers along the way. The committee showed in a tangible way that it has serious doubts about this Florida State team. The Seminoles have shown in a tangible way that they know how to keep winning.
Two more wins get them to their goal -- committee or no committee.
ESPN.com college football reporter Heather Dinich contributed to this report.
