Gov. Ron DeSantis talked up a potential legal challenge to the College Football Playoff selection process, contending that the $1 million he just budgeted to potentially pursue legal action challenging it is just a “small amount of money” for litigation.
“They’re not going to be able to change who’s played in the game,” DeSantis added. “But that decision cost the university a lot of money. I mean, like a lot.”
The Governor made the comments in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as part of an extended statement about the injustice of the exclusion of the Atlantic Coast Conference championship-winning Florida State Seminoles from this year’s four-team tourney.
DeSantis noted that the College Football Playoff committee’s decision let down his children, who have become avid Seminole fans during their time in Tallahassee.
“I told my kids, I said, ‘Guys, if they just win the next two games, they are going to the playoffs because they will be undefeated,” DeSantis said. When things didn’t go as planned, DeSantis said “the kids are bugging me: ‘Daddy, you said they were going to the playoffs. What happened?’”
Additionally, DeSantis told the Iowa crowd about the shortcomings of college football in the state for the last decade, a line he’s used elsewhere but not in this context.
“We were at the top of the heap in college football between Miami, FSU and Florida State,” DeSantis said, omitting the Florida Gators and listing the Tallahassee school twice.
“And that hasn’t been true in the last 10 years,” DeSantis lamented. “This is kind of the first shot that we’ve had to get back up there as a state.”
It’s unclear what remedy would ultimately satisfy DeSantis. During previous remarks on the Seminoles’ playoff snub, he has said regarding an expanded field that “maybe it’s probably too many teams because there’s a happy medium between having a playoff, which I think we should, to where the regular season doesn’t mean as much anymore.”
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