Even Simon Cowell Says College Football Playoffs Sends The Wrong Signal

On January 1, we can all look forward to tuning in to the College Football Playoffs to watch Alabama, Michigan, Texas and Washington duke it out on the field. And when the horns sound and sidelines erupt in the expectation of making the National Championship game, we can look over to Simon Cowell in the judge’s booth to see which teams he gives a thumbs up to, determining who moves on to the title game.

As preposterous as that sounds – letting some “talent judge” determine who plays, rather than having what happens on the field determine the outcome – that’s what the college football equivalent of Simon have already done. They’ve reduced the national championship to a pigskin version of America’s Got Talent!

And while Cowell is in truth unlikely to be anywhere near the playoffs, we see no reason the members of the College Football Playoff (CFP) committee cannot admirably fill in for the famous talent judge.

But we jest, of course. Nobody can fill Cowell’s shoes!

Yes, as a longtime Tallahassee resident and Florida State supporter, I have a rooting interest in the olde home team. But I share a multi-mascoted outrage of many that the CFP committee left the Seminoles out of the playoff because, as has been reported, the committee’s members – sitting in their overstuffed Lay-z-boys (likely the “recliner sponsor of the SEC”) – felt that Alabama, Michigan, Texas and Washington were teams they “wouldn’t want to face” more than they wouldn’t want to face Florida State.

Forget for the moment that the Seminoles finished this season UNDEFEATED while two of the teams selected LOST games this season. This detail plays heavily into what feels like really happened Sunday. There was no chance the committee wanted to leave out SEC winner Alabama. But Alabama’s loss was to Texas early in the year. So to take Alabama, they had to take Texas. And to do that, they had to discard the one thing we always say matters: actually winning the games you’re asked to play.

The CFP members said their decision was justified because Florida State would have to play without its starting quarterback, the great Jordan Travis. And we all know that without your starting quarterback, you’re toast, right? Forget that there are 100 other players on the team that, in the two games since Travis’s injury, has shut down both a bitter rival and a conference championship opponent.

The case against the committee’s line of reasoning has been made effectively in many places, including by Booger McFarland who called the decision “a travesty to the sport,” and by Florida State coach Mike Norvell who said, “I am disgusted and infuriated with the committee's decision today to have what was earned on the field taken away because a small group of people decided they knew better than the results of the games.”

Just to provide context, this year FSU became the first team in the history of the College Football Playoff to go undefeated and win a conference title as a Power 5 team, yet failed to make the playoff. A Power 5 team is a member of one of the country’s top five football conferences. FSU won the Atlantic Coast Conference, one of the big five.

In case you aren’t a college football fan and even if you are, there is nothing in the previous paragraph that suggests FSU does not deserve the chance to compete for the Championship.

But our focus today isn’t about the merits of the bad decision but rather its meaning in the larger scheme of leadership and fairness that are supposed to guide us in developing young leaders. That’s where we’ll find the biggest failure from this weekend.

The wrong-headedness and unfairness makes my head spin. But here are three crucial core values of great leadership that were directly undermined in the CFP committee’s decision:

1. Improvement: How often have we watched a coach tell their players, “Focus only on the game this week, because if we win, everything else takes care of itself.” The simple idea is that you win championships one well-executed game at a time. The point of this value is to keep your team motivated, hungry and able to learn from setbacks and overcome adversity. When FSU lost Travis to a broken leg, it still managed to win. Florida State’s defensive improvement is the secret sauce behind the Seminoles ACC title with huge gains in a lot of areas, especially third downs, red zone touchdown percentage and opponent completion percentage. The injured quarterback had nothing to do with any of those on-field successes.
2. Teamwork: Great teams always outperform collections of great individuals. How often has a Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh or, yes, Mike Norvell, gone 8,500 miles out their way to redirect the media’s focus away from the star quarterback’s gaudy personal stats to congratulate the entire team—offense, defense and special teams? The last time we looked, winning football required full participation by 11 players at a time, making it one of the greatest of all TEAM sports.
3. Success: The goal of competing in any area of life is winning, and advancement is based on executing on the first two of these bullet points better than the competition. Advancement is based on what you’ve done, not on what you might do. What twisted application of cause and effect could lead the “devastated and heartbroken” FSU quarterback Travis to Tweet, “I wish my leg broke earlier in the season so y’all could see this team is much more than the quarterback. I thought results matter … I am so sorry. Go Noles!”

So sorry? Mr. Travis, you have absolutely nothing to apologize for, and if there is any fairness left in the world, you’ll never pay for another lunch in Tallahassee again. You’re the leader’s leader of an historic Florida State team that will not soon be forgotten.

Thank you and all of your teammates and coaching staff for a great season and even greater lesson about leadership. You guys are two-thumbs up in the only book that matters here.

I’m sure even Simon Cowell would agree.