FSU Football: ESPN ranks Noles as Top 25 team in fictional tournament

FSU football has not seen a number by their name much over the last two seasons, but the Worldwide Leader thinks they are among the top teams at this point.

If you blinked last season, you missed the point where the FSU football team was ranked – as it came before the team’s season opener against Virginia Tech and left just as quickly after the blowout loss in the debut against the Hokies and, with a record of 5-7 on the season, had no chance of ever really coming back.

Over the past two seasons, the Seminoles have not spent much time in the polls as they have played just three games over that span as a ranked team in the AP poll – the 2017 season opener against Alabama, the following game against N.C. State and the aforementioned game against the Hokies, all of which ended in losses.

This season, there is not much hope at this point that the Noles will start the season ranked when they face off with Boise State (and truthfully, we wouldn’t blame the pollsters if they weren’t) – but an article about a fictional football tournament gave some knowledge to one outlet who still thinks highly of FSU football.

Florida State Seminoles Football

During an article recently on ESPN.com where a fictional 64 team tournament was made in honor of the current NCAA basketball tournament, the Worldwide Leader used their most recent Football Power Index Rankings and had the Seminoles as a number six seed in the tournament and ranked the Noles at No. 22 in the country right now.

What’s helping the Seminoles in these early rankings is that the FPI takes into account certain things such as a returning quarterback – and they count James Blackman based off his 2017 season as starter – as well as things like a teams recruiting and records over the past four seasons, not just what took place in 2018.

In a sign of where the ACC is at this point, FSU football ranked as the second best team in the conference right now – with the Clemson Tigers being ranked No. 1 and the next ACC team being the Miami Hurricanes at No. 32 right now.

As for the fictional playoff in the article, the Seminoles ended up beating No. 11 seed Ole Miss in the East Region first round (with the writer taking shots at how both teams have fallen sine opening the 2016 season against each other) before losing to No. 3 seed Penn State one round later.

(We did something similar here at Chop Chat a couple months ago using Power Five teams only and basing seeding on their records last year with No. 12 FSU football upsetting No. 5 Texas A&M in the South Region before losing to No. 4 West Virginia.)

With the first game of the FSU football season still over five months away from kicking off, the furthest thing from the team and head coach Willie Taggart’s mind should be a ranking – as long as they’re in the polls at the end of the year, which means they are improved over 2018.