Bowled over

 OK, OK, O-kay, Georgia. You've made your point.

You've shown the Committee you should have been in the College Football Playoff after all.

You've shown what a poser Florida State was, except it wasn't really "Florida State" you were playing but "Understudy Florida State."

You've also shown, inadvertently, how money-grubbing I-got-mine-ism has ruined the bowl system, reducing even big deals like the Orange Bowl to mere afterthoughts.

Because you know what?

Georgia 63, Florida State 3 will not get the Bulldogs into the CFP. Hell, Georgia 163, Florida State 3 would not have. The voters already decided that, same as they did in the old days. This is because college football figured a few years back it needed an undisputed national champion -- a nifty bit of cover for what it really needed, which was Even More Cash on top of the Himalayas of cash in which it was already wallowing.

Thus, the BCS. Thus, its successor, the CFP.

Which is just another gushing revenue stream, when you get down to the nut of it. It's more TV rights money for college football, more money for the four lucky participants, more money, period. Who cares if it renders meaningless every bowl game outside the CFP velvet rope -- including the Orange Bowl, no matter how robustly Georgia tattooed what essentially was a Florida State practice squad?

The Seminoles were missing 27 players for last night's debacle through injury, opt-outs or the transfer portal. The ones who were left clearly didn't give a tinker's damn about being there, because in Tallahassee they're still all butt-hurt over being left out of the Big Cashapalooza.

Win the Orange Bowl? Lose the Orange Bowl? Skip the Orange Bowl to safeguard one's future earnings? Who cared?

Only Georgia cared.  And that was only because the Bulldogs wanted to make an ultimately empty statement.

(A possibly relevant aside: One of the funniest takes coming out of last night was that the opt-outs are ruining the bowls because "all these kids care about today is money." As if that's not true of everyone in college football these days -- including all the coaches who for decades have been bailing on their team's bowl games because some bigger, richer school hired them away for, gee, more money. Grownups lead by example. And if that's the example you're setting, why wouldn't the kids follow suit?)

College football's solution to this cluster-oo is to expand the playoff to 12 teams next year, which means a few more bowl games with some relevance. The rest still will be what they are now, and thus still will be plagued by opt-outs. But at least the Orange Bowl (and several other major bowls) won't see another clown show like last night.

Me?

I think college football was a hell of a lot more fun when polls decided the national champ based on what happened on New Year's Day. That's when all the heavyweights played, and it was a day-long narrative that sometimes ended with a clear-cut champeen and sometimes didn't -- which was part of the fun, frankly.

"Damn, you're old," you're saying now.

Well, yeah. But at least I'm not opting out on it.