Paul Finebaum: How Jordan Travis injury impacts College Football Playoff committee view of FSU

The Florida State Seminoles beat North Alabama relatively easily. However, in the process, the Seminoles suffered the biggest loss they possibly could have. Star quarterback Jordan Travis went down with a devastating leg injury.

With Travis out, Florida State is still looking to make a push for the College Football Playoff. However, as Paul Finebaum explained on SportsCenter, it’s going to be much harder to even make the Playoff now.

“I think the committee will take into consideration how heartbreaking it is, but that’s not going to help Florida State if we get a squeeze here in a couple of weeks with a bunch of undefeated teams,” Finebaum said. “I think it hurts them badly. It could even knock them out of the Playoff in spite of what they do the rest of the way, winning next week against Florida and, obviously, against Louisville in the ACC Championship Game.”

Finebaum pointed out that a major issue for Florida State is that the Seminoles don’t have the most impressive resume among unbeaten teams, largely because their good wins like LSU and Clemson took several other losses this season. That leaves a smaller margin for error.

“The problem is they have good wins, they don’t have great wins and other schools will have great wins along the way. So, as bad as it hurts Florida State, they’re going to have to hold on and hope right now that some other schools lose.”

Ultimately, the College Football Playoff selection committee does consider when coaches or players are missing from a team. In 2021, for instance, Brian Kelly left a Notre Dame team in contention for the Playoff. At that time, chair Gary Barta noted that his absence could impact the Irish’s ranking. So, it stands to reason that could happen with Florida State and Jordan Travis now.

“The committee does have in our protocol the ability to consider any players that won’t be available or any coaches that won’t be available and then factor that in along with our other protocol, our other [ranking] criteria,” Barta said.

At the time, Barta also noted that the committee only will consider a team missing a player or coach following conference championship week. So, outside of a Seminoles loss to Florida or Louisville in the ACC title game impacting their ranking, a change in how Florida State is viewed by the CFP committee remains possible in the coming weeks, including on Selection Sunday.

“When all the champ games are done, that’s when we’ll do our homework,” Barta said. “That’s when, if there is a team that’s going into a [potential playoff] game, where we can project whether or not a player or a coach not available is going to make a difference.”

Mike Norvell gets emotional while describing the loss of QB Jordan Travis

Following the game, Florida State head coach Mike Norvell was emotional while describing the loss of Jordan Travis.

“I like to say you block it out. You don’t. Coming in, we knew this was Jordan Travis’ last game at Doak Campbell Stadium. I wanted to see him have a special game, special experience, you know. And for anytime somebody gets hurt, it hurt. I mean, it’s painful to see. It’s painful to have to go through,” Norvell said.

“And I mean, you just want so bad for that kid. He does everything right. He really just is a special, special young man. I can’t say that I did block it out. You go and you coach and you do everything just like I said earlier, for the players that are out there on the field. I owe it to them, too. But it doesn’t lessen anything of the impact of when you said, any player that goes down. I mean, it’s hard. Because this is a game that these guys, they put so much into.”