Seminoles are served some humble shepherd's pie
Florida State, trying to escape its ties with the ACC, gets jolted by Georgia Tech in Ireland.
Pride goeth before a fall. On Saturday it wenteth all the way to Ireland before it felleth down the stairs and, quite likely, out of College Football Playoff consideration nine days before Labor Day.
Florida State University has spent most of the past two years trying to escape a business deal it made with the Atlantic Coast Conference for no reason other than it thinks it deserves better. That is a hard case to make after Saturday. The 10th-ranked Seminoles were pushed around on defense, and they were static and ambitionless on offense, and they put themselves in a position to lose on a last-second field goal, which was provided by Aiden Birr from 44 yards out. Is what why Florida State wants out, because it might have to play Georgia Tech again? Hardly, but the Yellow Jackets won, 24-21, their first conquest of a Top 10 team in nine years, when they also took care of Florida State.
Georgia Tech’s three touchdown drives lasted six, 14 and 11 plays and covered 79, 75 and 89 yards. The Yellow Jackets ran for 12 first downs and 190 yards net. In the third quarter they hogged the ball for nine minutes and 22 seconds, and at the end, when it was tied, they got the ball with 6:33 remaining and never relinquished it. Tech wasn’t perfect. Indeed, quarterback Haynes King let a shotgun snap get past him and, although King desperately covered the loose ball, the Jackets faced a third-and-18. From there Birr would have looked at a 56-yard field goal. His career long was 48. But King found Eric Singleton in the flat, and Singleton deked and dodged to get 12 yards. That put Kirk in a comfort zone that the Seminoles will not know all season. As the ball sailed through, the Seminoles had to know they would have to win the ACC or go 11-1 to play for something, even in this stretched-out Diluted Dozen of a playoff. Last year they went 13-0 and couldn’t get into the four-team showdown.
For one day Birr became the most famous Georgia Tech placekicker, temporarily shoving aside Harrison Butker, Kansas City’s bigfoot and family values commentator. Tech was once a powerhouse, but Bobby Dodd’s been gone for a while, and Cumberland, a 222-0 victim of the Jackets in 1916, is no longer on the schedule. In 2019 Tech hired coach Geoff Collins to replace triple-option devotee Paul Johnson, and thus entered a four-year bowl drought. After the Jackets lost 27-10 to UCF and fell to 1-3 in 2022, Collins got the big haircut and Brent Key, the offensive line coach, became the “interim” coach, although aren’t they all?
There was no chance Key would become the resident coach, not with ex-Falcons star Deion Sanders styling and profiling at Jackson State. With no pressure, Key figured he might as well win. The Jackets knocked off Pittsburgh the next week. Later they beat 13th-ranked North Carolina and finished 5-7. Not only that, they were punching well above their weight, moving the line of scrimmage a couple of yards behind enemy lines. The decision-makers liked this sudden musculature and hired Key. Last year, with King becoming a two-way problem for everyone, the Jackets went 7-6 and beat — guess who? — Central Florida in a bowl game. Now Key says King is the “best quarterback in the ACC and maybe the country,” King will have chances to prove it. The Jackets have beaten the past five ranked ACC teams they’ve played.
Meanwhile, D.J. Uiagalelei began his third career stop at Florida State. He did about as well as he’s done anywhere else. His longest completion went 21 yards and he was 19 for 27 for 193 yards. Uiagalelei was the nation’s most renowned prep quarterback at St. John Bosco in Bellflower, Ca. but was tasked with replacing Trevor Lawrence at Clemson, and when that mountain got too big he transferred to Oregon State. He hasn’t wowed anyone since those high school days. Sometimes that’s when a player peaks. Afterward, coach Mike Norvell said the Seminoles had to get more “explosive.”
The rest of the conference was almost exploding from restrained giggles. Florida State is suing the ACC, as is Clemson, in order to circumvent a deal that is supposed to last through 2036. The Seminoles don’t want to pay a $130 million exit fee, and they feel they deserve their own media rights, which belong to the conference and are worth another $429 million.
A lot of people want a lot of things. FSU is basing these desires on the fact that ACC teams don’t make as much money as Big 10 or SEC teams. The SEC got $51 million apiece for its schools last year, while the ACC and Big Ten schools took in $43.4 million to $48.2.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is attempting to placate the malcontents by proposing a “unit” system that would give winners a bigger slice. But attempts to mediate the case have all failed so far.
Established ACC schools have reason for resentment. Until Florida State joined in 1991, it was independent in football. The ACC was the highest-revenue conference then, thanks to fabulously successful basketball. Culturally and geographically, Florida State was the ninth wheel. But commissioner John Swofford sensed that the football ground was shifting, and he got Miami to join up. The problem was that the Big Ten formed its own TV network and brought home a fortune, and ESPN had a deal with the SEC. Football, thanks to the BCS system, became the ATM.
Ironically FSU is now suing Swofford, who is no longer the commissioner, for including Raycom Sports in the ACC deal. Raycom is a smaller broadcast company that benefited from the ACC package. Swofford’s son Chad is a vice president.
Regardless of the legalese, Florida State is acting strictly from buyer’s remorse. It knows there’s a motherlode out there and it wants more of its residue. But the SEC, having added Texas and Oklahoma, doesn’t see the need to split up its gold mine two more ways. Same with the Big Ten, which added four West Coast schools this year.
Wonder what the ethics professors in the FSU business school, if any exist, think about all this? But then they’ve turned away from college sports long ago. The rest of the ACC can only savor days like Saturday, when the discipline and stability of Georgia Tech overcame a band of slapped-together transfers. The Seminoles just couldn’t move down the field comfortably which, to use the Southern vernacular, often happens to those who get too big for their britches.