After winning 29 consecutive NCAA football games before Oregon trounced them in the Rose Bowl, over half of Florida State University’s players headed straight to the locker room and failed to cross the field to offer congratulations to the Oregon players.
“That’s disappointing that 70 percent of the Florida state team is in the locker room,” responded ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit. “It’s easy to go across the field when you win a game to shake hands. You lose a game after 29 games and you can’t come over and shake the hand of an Oregon player and tell them congratulations?”
Much maligned for questionable antics off the field during his reign at FSU, quarterback Jameis Winston quickly journeyed across the gridiron to congratulate fellow Heisman Trophy winner and opposing quarterback Marcus Mariota.
The Seminoles who refused to shake hands weren’t the only bad sportsman in Pasadena. During the postgame celebrations several Ducks players mocked Winston about rape allegations.
Players on both sides would do well to checkout Devil at My Heels from their school libraries when they return for the spring semester. “In my day no one fell on the track and cried like a baby,” Olympian Louis Zamperini wrote in his autobiography. “We lost gracefully. And when someone won, he didn’t act like he’d just become king of the world, either.”
Oregon plays Ohio State in the national championship game in Arlington, Texas, on January 12.