Florida State Will Play In Its Bowl Despite A ‘Monumental’ Oversight Discovered By A Redditor

It was a strange year in Tallahassee, as the Florida State Seminoles kicked off the college football season as the No. 3 team in the nation, lost their starting quarterback in their first game, imploded their way to a 6-6 record, and saw head coach Jimbo Fisher leave for Texas A&M. But despite all of this, the team managed to win six games, which kept their record-setting consecutive bowl streak alive.

But as it turns out, the Seminoles should not be eligible to appear in their 36th straight bowl game. That’s according to some leg work done by the college football subreddit r/CFB, which looked into a game Florida State played against an FCS opponent that should not have counted.

The Seminoles and Delaware State played in November, with Florida State winning, 77-6. It was the usual FBS beatdown of an FCS squad, but the Hornets are not a usual FCS team. Over the last two years, they did not award 90 percent of their players scholarships, which means the game should not have counted.

The average of of grants-in-aid per year in football during a rolling two-year period is 54.815. This is 87.008% of the permissible maximum number of 63. As this is less than 90%, Florida State cannot count the Delaware State game through Exception 18.7.2.1.1.

The NCAA dictates FCS programs must meet that 90 percent threshold for a team to count towards bowl eligibility. Since that did not happen with Delaware State, Florida State’s countable record is actually 5-6 on the year.

Obviously reading this whole thing is kind of absurd, and if you want to write it off as a weird Reddit theory, that would make sense. But former ESPN reporter Brett McMurphy decided to ask some questions, and as it turns out, this has been described as a “monumental” oversight.

With how weird this season has been for the Seminoles, it only makes sense that it would end with some controversy regarding a win over an FCS squad.