Posted on 12/13/2023 11:53:36 PM PST by where's_the_Outrage?
The final four-team College Football Playoff selection process has come under remarkable scrutiny after the controversial decision to include one-loss SEC champion Alabama over undefeated ACC champ Florida State, and now some powerful people in the Sunshine State are getting involved on an official basis.
State Attorney General — and Florida Gators fan — Ashley Moody has launched an anti-trust investigation into the College Football Playoff to see if it engaged in anti-competitive conduct.
"I'm a lifelong Gator, but I'm also the Florida Attorney General, and I know injustice when I see it," Moody said, via the Tampa Bay Times.
"No rational person or college football fan can look at this situation and not question the result. The NCAA, conferences, and the College Football Playoff Committee are subject to antitrust laws."
She added: "My Office is launching an investigation to examine if the Committee was involved in any anti-competitive conduct. As it stands, the Committee's decision reeks of impartiality, so we are demanding answers — not only for FSU, but for all schools, teams, and fans of college football. In Florida, merit matters. If it's attention they were looking for, the Committee certainly has our attention now.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
They need to take it to Gorgia (that should also be in the CFP) and beat the snot out of them showing the world that FSU is indeed the champion causing the AP and Coaches polls to vote for them.
Looks like FSU is going to whine. They need to watch the movie RUDY.
Top tier college football is not just a business, but it is a lucrative, high-stakes, cutthroat kind of business. The loss of playoff seating will cost FSU millions of dollars in potential revenue, and fairness aside, the precise reasons for that loss properly attract the attention of Florida’s prosecutors. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that bribery or extortion in one form or another was involved, and if so, that would be criminal under both federal and state law.
The Florida AG reeks of not knowing the English language.
All BS aside, could Bama dominate FSU? The answer is yes.
FSU can prove their metal against GA, or continue to whine.
If the FSU whine continues they are going to be decimated against the Bulldogs. Provided they show up.
FSU was f”ked, now they can prove the are a champion or lose.
The bowl game between FSU and Georgia has no meaning anymore, whoever wins proves nothing, both teams have significant starters that elected to sit out the game, avoiding injury that would affect their NFL draft status.
Outside of the playoff teams, the bowl games have taken on a new level of meaning nothing, when the teams on the field are usually missing major parts of their team.
"No rational person or college football fan can look at this situation and not question the result"
Likewise no rational person could imagine Stanford and Cal in the ACC or Washington and Oregon in the Big Ten. Or a conference continuing to call itself the Big Ten even though it has many more teams than that.
Similarly, no rational person could see the NCAA adopt NIL after years of fining and punishing teams for alumni bribes to players, and after all the money provided to football players via scholarships that they don't appear to appreciate.
And no rational person could see the adoption of the "portal" making whatever school loyalty there used to be a thing of the past. What kind of scholars come out of a system where players can move from school to school so easily? Do all of the schools have African American Studies programs that are in sync?
And finally, no rational person could see the NCAA dumping the bowl system for a playoff system that gives college players an incentive to move up to the NFL for fear of getting injured in one of the increasing number of games, and making it difficult to divide up the TV revenues with a few teams playing many more games than the rest.
Scholars? We don’t need no steenkin’ scholars!...
If you want to see scholar athletes, you have to drop down to division III. When my son, who turns 39 today, did his undergraduate at Rose-Hulman, it was fun watching the future engineers give their all on the field, with maybe a few hundreds in the stands cheering them on. When he did his grad work at Illinois, the football team had no intention learning anything other than Getting In the NFL 101, with at best a few exceptions.
I believe Georgia has a big edge even though the Georgia transfer portal is busier than the Star Trek episode Shore Leave (Season 1 Episode 15)
FSU’s record doesn’t matter. With their injury situation, nobody believes they are one of the four best teams in the NCAA right now.
I understand that Florida State is upset, but they are not as good as they say they are. FSU will lose to Georgia. Guaranteed.
I agree but to choose Alabama who lost to Texas as one of the 4 teams seems particularly shameful.
Other teams out there like maybe Washington or even Ohio State seem as deserving.
Understood — but that’s the whole flaw of the “quality of opponent” approach. By that logic, Georgia should still be ranked higher than Alabama even though they lost to Alabama.
I’m not so sure FSU will lose to Georgia. Georgia has no real incentive to even play the game, and you can be sure their top NFL draft prospects will all want to sit out the game.
If FSU beats the tar out of Georgia, it would validate their claim to a national championship as a sporting proposition. Unfortunately, that would do nothing to removes suspicion or clean up the college playoff system and punish the guilty.
The better outcome would be for both to happen. FSU wins and gets rated as national champion, and the Florida AG digs into the playoff selection process and either finds nothing wrong or sanitizes it with well deserved prosecutions.
Nobody needed to be bribed to get Alabama into the CFP. The selection committee will always look for excuses to ensure that one — if not TWO — SEC teams are among the top four ranked teams at the end of the season. The deck is already stacked in the SEC’s favor in terms of fan support and TV ratings.
Oh please. She’s a politician. She’s just pandering. Nothing will come of it. Whatever anybody’s objections, everybody signed up for the current system. We could have had a 12 team playoff starting this year but the ACC objected. Yes, that’s right. fsu’s own conference torpedoed it.
By the way, where were these objections in 1993 when once beaten fsu was placed in the national title game ahead of undefeated West Virginia?
Where were the objections when once beaten fsu was placed in the national title game in 2000 ahead of one loss miami who beat them head to head?
Or is it only a problem when fsu comes out on the short end of the stick rather than somebody else?
At best, then, in favoring SEC teams for money reasons, the college playoff system is not as meritocratic as advertised. Or maybe, with the business of college sports being as dodgy as it is, something worse was going on. Florida’s statewide grand jury can provide a salutary public service by getting to the bottom of things.
Its funny you say this. This is exactly what I’ve been saying for years and years now as we’ve seen starter after starter opt out - for example for UF’s meaningless bowl against ucf and against Oregon State.
The response I got over and over again was “oh no no. Bowl games are very meaningful. Anytime your team plays it counts and it matters. Players who opt out are quitters. If you don’t agree the bowl game is very meaningful then you’re just a sour grapes sore loser and complete wuss.”
OK! Message understood. I will be every bit as understanding when fsu gets shellacked in their bowl game and will lord it over them for at least a year. (we all know Kirby has massively outrecruited them and that therefore UGA’s bench is a million times deeper than fsu’s). That’s how the deal works - fine by me.
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