FSU Football: Fraudulent 2017 ending hampered reality of 2018 season

FSU football is getting ripped for taking a step back record wise when, in fact, the 2017 ending was a joke that makes 2018 look worse than it was.

The body hadn’t even gotten cold on the corpse that was the 2018 season for the FSU football team when a percentage of the Seminoles fan base began their calls for the head of first year head coach Willie Taggart – some because of the 5-7 season that had just been completed while others never willing to give him a chance because of non-football issues that make me ashamed to call them fellow Noles.

One of the first things to read from these “fans” about why Taggart should be gone after one season revolved around the notion of “well, the Seminoles finished 7-6 last season so he did worse this year and should be gone as a result.”

Florida State Seminoles Football

While everyone is entitled to their opinion, something has to be said and it may be too blunt for some: if you believe this notion, leave the FSU football fan base and don’t come back. Why? Because the ending of the 2017 season was a fraud and ruined any chance of Taggart being given a chance to rebuild a broken program.

Under the former “leadership” that later bolted for East Texas, the Seminoles found themselves 2-5 entering the final five games of the season. Of those five games to end the 2017 regular season, just one team – Clemson – had a winning record as Florida, Syracuse and Louisiana Monroe combined to finish 12-23 while FCS Delaware State has won eight games of the last five years.

This season, FSU football was 4-3 entering the final five games of the season – and finished the year by playing five teams that have winning records that include two teams who will likely be in the College Football Playoff (Clemson and Notre Dame) and another heading for a New Years Six bowl game (Florida).

Am I excusing what took place this season? Not at all and I guarantee that Taggart is not doing so either. What I am saying is that maybe the best thing for the program would have been to have the losing season occur one season before.

If 2017 was the season where all the streaks came to an end for FSU football, the former “head coach” would have truly been exposed as a fraud for what he had done with the program as well as his mostly useless assistant coaching staff – all but Odell Haggins, who seemed to be the only one giving a damn toward the end of the year.

I’ve said it before and I will continue to preach this until I’m blue in the face – the problems facing the 2018 FSU football team have been several years in the making starting with recruiting classes that cared more about stars than talent and heart. Much of that has to go with several of the key assistants that recruited the 2012-2014 teams being gone and replaced with wastes of space.

If you want to be critical about what took place this season with the FSU football, by all means of for it. Want to be upset about the undisciplined play and losing six games by 19 points or more? Go for it! Being mad about losing to both Miami and Florida for the first time in the same season since 2009? Fall in line behind me!

But don’t for one season try and use 2017 as an excuse why this season was a failure. A failure was rescheduling a game just so we could be bowl eligible last season. Give last year’s team this season’s schedule and I guarantee you we are looking at a 3-9  record last season at best.