The final College Football Playoff rankings shook up the college football world on Sunday. Undefeated ACC champion Florida State was the first team left out of the 2023 CFP in favor of one-loss SEC champion Alabama. In Cleveland on 92.3 The Fan, host Ken Carman theorized that no matter what the Seminoles did against Louisville in the ACC title game, the playoff committee was always going to keep FSU out of the semifinals. And for good reason.
ESPN, which runs the ACC and SEC Network and owns the vast majority of college bowl games, is in cahoots with the CFP and the SEC to lure Florida State into the same conference as their in-state rivals at Florida.
It’s clear in Carman’s eyes that Florida State is a football-first school, and they deserve to be in a conference that sees the value in football over being a strong basketball conference.
“They left them out, and they wanted to do it cause they want the ACC to break up,” Ken Carman said. “They (the SEC) want them all, and they know Florida State.”
Co-host Anthony Lima said the quarterback situation at FSU was completely different than what Ohio State had in 2014 when Cardale Jones led the Buckeyes through the playoff and to a national championship in place of J. T. Barrett.
Lima said the Seminoles lacked the ability to successfully politick their way into the playoff, because they didn’t have a capable backup quarterback to answer the call against the likes of Michigan or Washington.
“How are you gonna politick?” he asked. “Nobody thinks you’re half as good of a team as you were when you had a star quarterback. That’s a big difference.”
“If they won by 40 against Louisville, they weren’t getting in,” Carman responded. “It was Alabama played the right team at the right time and beat the right team at the right time.”
“I think for a lot of Florida State fans and for a lot of general college football fans, 13-0’s better than 12-1. Don’t give a damn,” he later added. “They should be in and not you. But this is where ESPN gets exactly what they want. And this isn’t anti-ESPN. It’s just the truth of how I see it.
“It’s the beginning of the end of the ACC. Clemson will go with them. Throw in another couple if you want to. Maybe the Big Ten will grab a couple, even though I don’t know how many programs they would actually want. Maybe the Big 12, who is trying to position itself as THE basketball conference, goes and gets more. But hell, they already got 16 teams in the conference. How many more can you take?”
