MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Georgia football coach Kirby Smart’s team just pummeled a Florida State team a shell of its former self due to a slew of opt outs, injuries and transfers.
The final in the Orange Bowl: No. 6 Georgia 63, No. 5 Florida State 3.
It was the largest margin of victory in college football bowl history.
“Maybe I’m wrong here and maybe this will be a bad sound bite,” Smart said Saturday night near the end of his postgame press conference. “People need to see what happened tonight, and they need to fix this. It needs to be fixed. It’s very unfortunate that they, who has a good football team and a good football program, are in the position they’re in.”
Florida State had 28 players miss the game due to opt outs, injuries or transfers.
“Everybody can say it’s their fault,” Smart said. “Everybody can say we had our guys and they didn’t have their guys. I can listen to all that, but college football has to decide what they want. I know things are changing and things are going to change next year (with the 12-team playoff), but you know what? There’s still going to be bowl games outside of those. People got to decide what they want and what they want to get out of it.”
Florida State was 13-0 and the ACC champions but left out of the four-team playoff after losing starting quarterback Jordan Travis to injury.
“It’s really unfortunate for those kids on that sideline that had to play in that game that didn’t have their full arsenal,’ Smart said. ‘It affected the game 100 percent.”