FSU Football being held hostage by NCAA on Jordan Travis wavier

FSU football has been waiting…and waiting…and waiting more for the governing body of college sports to make a decision on if Travis can play in 2019.

A lot of things have taken place since the end of the 2018 season for the FSU football team: a whole new recruiting class has come in, the 2019 schedule has been etched into stone starting in just over a month against Boise State and three different quarterbacks have transferred to the Seminoles since the season ending loss to Florida.

Two of them we already know about their eligibility at this point for the Seminoles: grad transfer Alex Hornibrook has one season in garnet and gold after transferring in from Wisconsin while Wyatt Rector is awaiting a decision after coming in from Western Michigan.

The third quarterback out of the trio, Louisville transfer Jordan Travis, is the one that FSU football has been waiting on for going on the better part of eight months now as the school put in a wavier that would allow the West Palm Beach native to play immediately after just one season on the roster for ACC Atlantic Division foe Louisville.

Florida State Seminoles Football

If this sounds like a broken record for you to read about it, well it is a broken record for us to write about it. Right after the annual spring game in April, I wrote an article about why it was annoying that the NCAA still hadn’t made a decision on the wavier – all while approving wavier for quarterbacks at Ohio State (Justin Fields from Georgia) and Miami (Tate Martell from Ohio State).

As you can see, we here at Chop Chat have so much influence when it comes to the governing body of college sports because the 2019 fall practice schedule begins in a few weeks for the Seminoles and…they are still waiting for a yes or no from the NCAA about whether Travis could be eligible to play in 2019.

At this point, it’s not a matter of life or death for the Seminoles if the NCAA does deny the request and forces Travis to sit out the 2019 season. Does it stink to not have that option? Of course. But, with James Blackman back as the likely starter and Hornibrook essentially being a decent backup to start things off, the Noles are in decent shape.

Head coach Willie Taggart, at the ACC Kickoff event last week, spoke about the situation and sounded as if he was reserved to the fact that Travis won’t be playing in any games this season.

"“You don’t know how it’s going to work out. It’s one of those deals, I mean, you see it around the country now, some get waivers, some don’t…Jordan is part of our football team, a heck of a football player. It will be great to have him. If we don’t get him, it’s going to be great to have him continue to develop and be ready to go next year.”"

I don’t mean to sound like a cynic. but that pretty much tells FSU football fans to say hello to Travis starting in the 2020 season. The positives of that is he gets another season to prepare for what will likely be a shot at starting that season without worrying about getting hurt – which, as a fan of the Noles, is a huge plus.

At this point, it’s time for the NCAA to just get off the bench and make a decision. Us who root for the Seminoles are fine either way – what we are not fine with is being held hostage by the waiting process. We’re going to accept any decision…we just need one to be made.