Week Zero & Florida State's Crash Landing
2024 is off to a great start (unless you're a Florida State Fan)
The 2024 College Football season got off to a wonderful start bringing joy and misery to millions on August 24 with what is called Week 0.
During week 0, a small number of games are played ahead of the vast majority of teams begin their season over labor day weekend, which we call “Week 1.”
The teams that play in week 0 are usually very not good, and are only television draws for fans of the teams playing and football perverts who will do anything for a fix. For some, it’s a nice reunion with the teams they follow. For others, it’s the equivalent of pounding a disgusting cocktail of kombucha, mouth wash, and cough syrup to stave off delirium tremens.
I watched one of these games, but I do not have a problem. If I had a problem I’d also watch the USFL or the USFXXL or whatever T-shirt size they’re calling spring football now.
The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the Florida State Seminoles met in Ireland for what was dubbed the “Aer Lingus College Football Classic.” Aer Lingus, for the uninitiated, is Ireland’s formerly state owned airline and now a fully privatized corporation perfectly happy to sponsor a football game but would prefer not to pay its workers, thank you kindly.
The Florida State Seminoles, a football powerhouse named for a Native American tribe but the school really wants you to know they do “not have a mascot, but rather a symbol that we respect and honor,” is also in a pay dispute with its conference. That’s the Atlantic Coast Conference, which features teams on the Pacific Coast and in Appalachia.
Specifically, Florida State wants out of the conference because they think they can make more TV revenue in another conference. They don’t want to have to share the TV revenue they current make with the other members of the conference. Rather than waiting for their contract with the conference to expire, though, they are suing the conference, trying to dissolve the contract under the legal doctrine of wah-wah-I-don’t-wanna-share-wah-wah-ah.
Their opponent, Georgia Tech, is one of the smelly Atlantic Coast Conference teams taking money from the Florida State Seminoles. Going into the game Brent Key, Tech’s coach, was 11-10 in his time at the helm.
This isn’t particularly surprising. Georgia Tech is not traditionally a very good football team. They are an academics-first school that makes their student athletes get engineering degrees. Calvin Johnson, inarguably the most talented player to ever come out of the program, helped invent “a cost-efficient latrine that utilizes the sun's energy to treat bacteria-laden human waste,” which is $52 dollars cheaper than the average toilet, per the Savannah Morning News.
Currently, Tech’s offensive coordinator is a 42 year old man named Buster Faulkner. Vegas set the team’s win total at 4.5. Things looked very bad for them going into the game as an 11.5 point underdog.
That feeling was reinforced when the game started. Florida State marched down the field, scored a touchdown, then went for a completely unnecessary two-point conversion with a swinging gate trick play that inexplicably worked.
8-0, Seminoles.
Georgia Tech got the ball next and marched down the field using this ancient tactic called “running the football to set up the pass.” They scored but did not go for a two-point conversion because they had to do math homework instead of practicing trick plays.
8-7, Seminoles.
The Seminoles got the ball back and then were stymied in their attempts to score further because the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets were doing this ancient tactic called “tackling.” This, in combination with Georgia Tech’s “running the ball” strategy (I hope I’m spelling that right), flummoxed the Seminoles, who clearly did not trust their quarterback, whose average depth of target (i.e.: how far a receiver is from the line of scrimmage) at the half was -1 yards.
The game ultimately came down to a fourth quarter drive with the score tied at 21. Georgia Tech moved down the field using runs and short passes to set up a last second field goal. After it went through the uprights, the play-by-play commentator (who had been drinking Guinness on air) exclaimed that Tech had found “gold at the end of the Irish rainbow.” For their troubles, they were also given a very generic looking crystal trophy.
Florida State’s consolation prize was insane internet posters. One fan posted on a message board that the team was full of “soft [racial epithets redacted].” Danny Kannell, a former Florida State quarterback, complained that the play preceding Georgia Tech’s field goal was officiated wrong and proceeded to post video as evidence that shows the play being officiated 100% correctly. The Florida State centric Twitter account sponsored by Barstool Sports asked, “Y’all ever had to throw footballs in a game while having jet lag after a plane ride around the world? Didn’t think so.”
It’s never great to lose your opening game but the Florida State program and its fans are especially in their feelings given the way their 2023 season ended. They were on track to compete for a national title, then their quarterback’s knee exploded and the Georgia Bulldogs casually tossed them into the sun by beating them 63-3 in the Orange Bowl.
The Seminoles have plenty of winnable games left on the calendar, though, and fans may be able to talk themselves out of the existential angst pit—unless they blow it against Boston College next week, then everybody’s going to lose their minds and half the state’s going to have to be committed under the Baker Act.