Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sets aside $1M in state budget for fight against CFP committee

If you want to make a sports debate more absurd, add a politician or two.

Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, said he was setting aside $1 million from his state's annual budget in support of litigation against the College Football Playoff committee for its apparent snub of Florida State.

At a press conference, DeSantis told the media, including The Hill:

“But what we decided to do, we’re setting aside a million dollars for any litigation expenses that may become as a result of this really, really poor decision by the college football playoffs to exclude an undefeated team who won a big Power Five conference championship,” DeSantis said at the press conference.

DeSantis, who noted that his kids are big Seminoles fans, said litigation may not change the outcome, but that the state would let “the chips fall where they may on that.”

“We had one of our schools, Florida State, go undefeated this year and win the conference championship,” DeSantis said. “They earned a spot in the college football playoffs, and they were excluded from that, and I think was something that’s been very, very controversial.”

Politicians adding their voices to the outrage over controversial decisions in sports is nothing new, and Florida is unique in how it has chosen to address said issues with the CFP. 

In 2017, when Central Florida went undefeated but was kept out of the playoff, then-governor Rick Scott issued a state proclamation declaring the school as national champions. Fast forward six years later, and Scott again made his anger known — and arguably, very performative — by writing a letter to the committee demanding that it turn over any communications relating to the decision to exclude FSU.

FSU will play Georgia in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 30.

DeSantis' move comes at an incredibly tense time for colleges across the Sunshine State, including FSU. On Monday, Stephanie Saul wrote an extensive article for The New York Times discussing how many liberal-leaning professors have left their jobs, including those with tenure, in response to DeSantis' educational policies that limited discussions about gender, sexuality and race relations. Saul's report stated that FSU lost 37 professors for reasons other than retirement in the past year, a spike versus an average of 23 over the previous five years.

One can joke that there's a cost savings in those departures, but it's as much a moral one as it is a financial one. Putting aside taxpayer money for a frivolous fight against powerbrokers of a sport also looks to be a sunken cost in both ways.