My Thoughts About The Playoffs

I still have a lot of feelings. I am heartbroken and hurt, and I feel cheated.

If you had told freshman year me that she would be upset that FSU is going to the Orange Bowl, she wouldn’t have believed you. In 2020, our record was 3-6. It was Mike’s first season and we were at the beginning of our climb. In 2021, we won more games but fell short of bowl eligibility. In 2022, we were finally bowl-eligible again. We got to go to the Cheez-It Bowl and winning made us feel like champions. I thought it couldn’t get better than this and that girl would have been happy with the Orange Bowl. I actually daydreamed about the Orange Bowl last year thinking about how cool it would be to go.

2023 me will never be happy with the Orange Bowl.

I was surrounded by my Marching Chiefs family when we learned the decision made by the committee. We had just started our journey home from Charlotte and while there was nervous energy, hopes were high. After all, we had just woken up ACC Champions. A Power 5 conference champion had never been shut out. Everyone has been saying “Win and we’re in” and we won.

Apparently, exclusions apply to that statement.

I held my phone up so all of my teammates could see and watch together. Girls were filming hoping that we would have a good reaction video to post later. Everyone was holding hands and praying we would get a chance. We tried not to listen to announcers and media personalities saying we didn’t deserve a place because it felt like fake media hype. It seemed so simple, the decision for the first three spots. The media conversations felt forced.

They weren’t.

The silence that filled the bus in the moments following the announcement is a feeling I won’t soon forget. We turned the broadcast off instantly because we didn’t want to hear anything the announcers had to say and after seeing the clips later in the day I’m glad we did. It would have hurt more to see the team’s live reaction. It would have hurt more to hear them blame it on an injury.

After sitting with my thoughts and feelings for a week, I realized that I was naive to think we were ever going to get a chance. When we started the season, everyone said LSU was going to slaughter us. They didn’t but I guess LSU was just having a bad day. We beat a ranked Duke team that the media had been praising for weeks. Duke isn’t a football school so I guess that win isn’t a big deal. Clemson, Miami, and Florida are having down years so I guess those wins are irrelevant too. We only allowed Louisville to score six points in a conference championship game. A true freshman quarterback was only able to get 55 yards up on the board though so I guess winning that ACC title doesn’t mean anything either.

I watched week after week as media outlets put us down. I should have known there was a reason College Game Day didn’t visit Tallahassee. It wasn’t because there were bigger matchups on the line. It’s because they didn’t want us.

They have put so much blame on Jordan Travis that it hurts me and I’ve never even met him. The closest I’ve been to him is when he stops to pray on the yard line behind me during pregame. This is not his fault. This is not Tate’s fault for being out due to a dirty hit in the Swamp. This is not Brock’s fault for being a freshman unaware that he was going to have his first career start in a conference championship.

I don’t like hearing people argue that the teams that made the playoffs would have stomped us. You can’t know that. You will never know that now. If that had been the outcome of those games and least we could have said we tried. All we can do now is wonder what if.

I feel like I’m being told that our experiences and feelings don’t matter. “Don’t cry, you couldn’t win anyway.” “Your star QB is out so your team just isn’t the same.” If those two statements were true we would have losses on our record but we don’t. If those two statements were true why did they keep us in the running until the last ranking? Two playoff rankings were put out after Jordan’s injury and if you thought we were good enough then. What changed?

It all feels fabricated. I feel like they wanted that moment with the team in Doak. They wanted to see that team heartbroken live on TV. They wanted this fanbase to have hope and then take it away. It wouldn’t have made for good TV otherwise. Yes, there would have been teams that were sad but they would have been a one loss team who knew that their chance wasn’t guaranteed.

On a bigger level, I feel like they looked at the ACC and told us we don’t matter as a conference. We all just watched as the PAC-12 fell apart but I guess no one will care if it happens again. This could completely change the landscape of college football because obviously winning all your games isn’t the standard anymore. Future players are going to look at what just happened and might change their mind about where they want to attend because the thought of knowing you could do everything right and still lose isn’t worth it.

Am I one of the people that wants FSU to try and get out of the ACC? Yes. But I don’t want it to be like this. I don’t want it to be because the other conferences don’t respect us. I want us to leave at the top of our game and I want everyone to want us. I don’t want to feel like the ugly duckling.

I love this team and this school. I love being in the Marching Chiefs. I am glad we all found out together and got to comfort each other in the hours that followed. We got to laugh and joke but most importantly we got to experience a great season together and we get to do it one more time in Miami. It might not be where we want to go but we are going to go and show the committee what it means to be a Seminole. If you thought you didn’t like the War Chant before, just wait until we arrive in Hard Rock Stadium.