FSU wrote its furious release bashing 2023 playoff snub before results were revealed

On Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023, Florida State beat Louisville 16-6 in a seriously bleak ACC Championship game, mustering just 55 yards through the air. Still, the win capped off an undefeated season, making the Seminoles one of just three teams without a loss that year. 

Hours later, the College Football Playoff Committee snubbed the school on live television, picking one-loss Alabama as the last entry in the sport’s four-team playoff.  

Florida State dropped a furiously feral press release, foaming at the mouth over its newfound status as the first undefeated Power Five team to ever be left out of the college football postseason. 

It was a response that the school had locked and loaded. Emails obtained by FOIAball show the athletic department prepared the screed against the committee—and the sport as a whole—an hour before it got the news.

At 11:23 a.m. Sunday, Florida State Athletic Director Mike Alford received the text of the statement from a top communications staffer, which said the decision (which had yet to be revealed) “significantly damages the legitimacy” of the playoff committee and would have  “destructive, far reaching, and permanent” consequences. 

College football, two years later, seems to be doing just fine. FSU, on the flip side, lost four straight games after firing off the missive. 

Heading into Championship week, Florida State sat fourth in the committee's playoff ranking, behind undefeated Georgia, Michigan, and Washington. Alabama and Texas, each with one loss, lurked several slots back.

With Georgia falling to Alabama, 27-24 in Atlanta, the Seminoles seemed to be the easy choice. But everyone knows the specter that loomed over the program. 

Two weeks earlier, down 13-0 in what should have been a cake walk against North Alabama, quarterback Jordan Travis' leg snapped on a 16-yard, first-quarter scramble, ending a stellar season that had generated Heisman Trophy buzz.

FSU trudged along without him, coming back to beat the Lions, topping Florida the next week, then slogging past Louisville to finish 13-0. 

Still, fans of the school—and even some players—feared the committee would leave the Seminoles out, given the team hadn’t been the same explosive monster before Travis went down. 

In a radio interview months later with Danny Kanell, Alford said that he heard a pessimism seep into the team after the ACC title game victory.

“Walking to the bus out of the locker room with some players that I will remain nameless,” Alford said, “the conversation between the two of them ... was one of them saying, 'We're not going ... we're not going to be in. Alabama won. We're not going."

Alford said he refuted the players on the spot. 

“We're a power five conference champion. We're going," he said he replied, adding that he "did not get real worried" about the possibility of not being picked.

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The College Football Playoff selection show kicked off at noon ET on Sunday. Just 23 minutes in, it revealed Alabama had leapfrogged the Seminoles for the final spot.  

Four minutes later, at 12:27 p.m., the ‘Noles published Alford’s vitriolic statement. 

In it, he lambasted the playoff committee, claiming its choices would destroy the fabric of the entire sport.

"The argument of whether a team is the 'most deserving OR best' is a false equivalence,” it read. “It renders the season up to yesterday irrelevant and significantly damages the legitimacy of the College Football Playoff. The 2023 Florida State Seminoles are the epitome of a total TEAM. To eliminate them from a chance to compete for a national championship is an unwarranted injustice that shows complete disregard and disrespect for their performance and accomplishments. It is unforgiveable."

While one could imagine a fuming AD dictating a statement the moment he got the appalling news, Alford already had his attack on the committee’s decision prepped.

Emails released via a records request from FOIAball for Alford’s communications from Dec. 2-5, 2023, show he got the text of his statement from the school’s communications team titled “FW: DRAFT (11:23)” at 11:23 a.m. The text of the email, though titled “DRAFT,” was identical to what the school released exactly an hour later.

The exclusion of Florida State set off a firestorm of reactions. On the show, as noted by host Rece Davis, FSU became the first undefeated champion from a Power 5 conference to fail to make the college football playoff field. 

ESPN personality Booger McFarland called the decision a “travesty,” saying Florida State’s unblemished record should be all that mattered.

"The name of the game is to win,” he said. “Those kids that went out there and busted their behind and [to] not get in the playoff based on the eye test … that’s really what has me bothered here.”

But former Alabama quarterback Greg McIlroy praised the committee for getting it right.

“The committee actually did the thing that they've talked about for the last ten years,” he said. “They took everything into account, they took a step back, they acknowledged injury ... and they put in the four best teams.“

On the show, Davis pulled away from a shot of the solemn Seminoles’ watch party to give them time to “grieve,” cutting directly to playoff committee head Boo Corrigan, who admitted Travis’ injury was the deciding factor. 

“Without Jordan Travis, they are a different team,” Corrigan said. 

Alford later claimed in the Kanell interview that he realized the school might be snubbed when he “got to the selection show.” 

“When I get there and look up and see who's covering us … That hit me, we’re not in. I did not get real worried until I saw that.”  

Fans made the same observation when the show kicked off. 

"ESPN got Marty Smith at Alabama ready for the post selection interview… ALABAMA IS IN, WATCH," wrote a poster on X. 

But if Alford wasn’t worried, he was nonetheless prepared. 

The exclusion set off a firestorm online from Florida State fans, who rallied behind his ire. A similar outpouring of praise and commiseration exploded in Alford’s inbox.

Current and former Florida State employees reached out, with one noting (not without initial shade) that, “Mr. Alford. I disagree with most of your decisions regarding FSU football, but your statement got it right about the committee's decision to put FSU in 5^th place. Thank you for saying it.“ 

Another professor shared his own proprietary analysis of just how egregious he thought FSU’s omission was, which showed FSU would have been second in the old BCS ranking system.

The email concluded the new playoff system was only adopted because teams like Florida State were benefiting too much.

Yes, the SEC came up.

Employees at other universities reached out, a University of Southern California professor calling it “a bunch of crap.” 

Condolences rolled in from high society, with both a top NASCAR official and the Consul General of Ireland in Miami, who was working with the school on its 2024 season opener in Dublin, reaching out. 

(This is unrelated, but if you ever struggle with how you are doing at work, take comfort knowing a C-suite at NASCAR mispelled his last name in his email signature.)

One donor emailed to say he’d pay for a banner to be hung after Florida State, naturally, walloped Georgia in the Orange Bowl. 

“After we win our bowl game, I'm happy to pay for a National Championship banner to be raised in Doak. Split nattys have happened plenty of times before,” he wrote. 

The offer turned out to be moot. A team of mostly backups was demolished by Georgia in a romp so thorough that Kirby Smart practically apologized to the Seminoles’ squad. 

But before they were routed, prominent boosters had already posited a solution, immediately pushing for FSU to make a run to the SEC. 

“Sadly, until we get out of the ACC, we will no longer be able to attract or keep quality athletes or coaches, at least in football,” wrote a past president of Extra Point Club, an all-women booster program started by Ann Bowden, in a thread with Alford and Stephen Ponder, the president and CEO of Seminole Boosters, Inc. 

That wasn’t the only email Alford got about breaking with the Atlantic Coast Conference. 

“Are you going to get us out of the ACC since we can’t compete for a national championship in this conference?” an alumnus demanded to know. 

Three weeks later, the school’s board of trustees filed a lawsuit against the conference, suing over its exit fee, which the school estimated to be over a half-billion dollars. 

“The stunning exclusion of the ACC’s undefeated football champion from the 2023-2024 College Football Playoff in deference to two one-loss teams from two competing Power Four conferences crystalized the years of failures by the ACC to fulfill its most fundamental commitments to Florida State,” the suit alleged in its opening statement. 

That was settled earlier this spring. FSU is still in the ACC. 

But if you thought that was all Alford had to endure that week, he had one other big headache. 

That Monday, he got an email about the car he’d rented for the title game in Charlotte, revealing he’d forgotten to leave the keys when he dropped off his vehicle. 

“Good morning,” a National Car Rental representative wrote. “Wilson Air Center informed us that the keys to the Malibu were not turned in at their counter. Do you still have keys?”

FSU did not answer inquiries from FOIAball, including whether National ever got its car keys back.

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