At a bar not far (but so far) from the Rose Bowl, Florida State fans stay true

They stayed well north of somber even given what they watched. They cringed and groused and yearned for interference calls that didn’t come. They cared even as their depleted Florida State Seminoles cratered understandably 2,300 miles away in the Orange Bowl — and even as Georgia resumed looking like that towering machine with locomotive running backs, monster-truck defenders and otherworldly receivers. They bemoaned an overthrown Florida State pass just before halftime with the Seminoles trailing by 39.

They had something of a bummer of a December, from the jarring omission of then-unbeaten Florida State from the College Football Playoff to the Orange Bowl opt-outs of 25 Seminoles for the NFL draft or the transfer portal to the bowl game that ended in a 63-3 loss, but say one big thing for them.

Maybe it’s 42-3, but they’re still arguing calls.

Reese Darlington, vice president of the Seminole Club of Los Angeles and Florida State Class of 2015, went next door for an ice cream cone. The vendor saw his Florida State shirt and exclaimed, “You guys got screwed!”

Even clear out here, his club and the Prince O’ Whales bar have an entrenched kinship. It’s where you would go in Los Angeles to be among fellow ’Noles and for two beers and a cheeseburger for $11 to boot. The bartender tells you she has no affiliation to Florida State, but she wears the T-shirt anyway. Had the Orange Bowl had more pregame oomph and had the holidays not done their usual job of scattering people, the crowd on a Saturday afternoon might have approached the hundred or so for the Florida State-Louisville ACC championship game Dec. 2.

“I’ve never seen it like that,” said club member Myles Blatt, Class of 2018. “We love this spot. They hold it down for us.”

“I think it’s cool,” Darlington said, “to have a home base, here in L.A. Maybe if you don’t know anybody, some people, they just show up here.”

Arch Manning speaks (to the media) for the first time (while at Texas)

When the Seminoles nudged in a 22-yard field goal after a great downfield catch by wide receiver Kentron Poitier, making the deficit 14-3, a person sitting in the outdoor portion could hear the little barroom singing just indoors:

So fight, fight, fight, fight for victory!

Once more, the great Los Angeles had presented different worlds on a given day: an inland one and a coastal one, a chilly one and a temperate one, a drizzly one and a blue-skied one, a staged one and a real one.

By morning, in Pasadena technically, there came the media day for Monday’s Rose Bowl between No. 1 Michigan (13-0) and No. 4 Alabama (12-1), in a tinny giant tent, with the usual media-day frolics such as players borrowing microphones to interview teammates or reporters asking players which actors they would want to play them. Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh and Alabama Coach Nick Saban spoke before smallish crowds of listeners and large banks of cameras, and Alabama defensive back Terrion Arnold told of battles on the field but concluded with a giant grin that in the end, “I just want to be hugged.”

They’re all in the “in” party, Michigan for the third straight time, Alabama for the eighth time in the 10 seasons of the four-team College Football Playoff. They are where Florida State and Georgia thought they might be, just before the final decision of Sunday, Dec. 3, when they got the unwanted numerals “5” and “6” as their rankings, while Texas went from 7 to 3 and Alabama went from 8 to 4.

“Your dreams can come true,” Harbaugh started. “Your goals can come true.”

“How is everybody doing today?” Saban said in his typical news conference opener. “First of all, Happy new year.”

Way, way across greater Los Angeles through freeways and surface streets and over the Hollywood Hills, they watched a different side of the country and of the playoff. They watched the Grievance Bowl going on near Miami. The Florida State fans at Prince O’ Whales clapped for good plays. They hollered about the spotting of the ball at 28-3. At least one grumbled about a dropped interception at 42-3.

They knew their team’s showing in its only loss of the season provided no justification of the hard, hard decision the 13-member playoff selection committee had to make. They saw the repeatedly televised sight of one of the most admirable players in any season, quarterback Jordan Travis — on the sideline, in his clutches and glasses, helping out, his injury a reason for the committee’s decision. They knew that what happened to them — besides the opt-outs of players such as edge rusher and team heartbeat Jared Verse and 50-catch receiver Keon Coleman and 906-yard running back Trey Benson and besides fresh injuries Saturday — was Georgia itself.

Georgia had some angst, too, in its toppling from No. 1 to No. 6 after it couldn’t solve Alabama in the SEC championship game so that its 29-game winning streak ended and its national title run stopped at two. It looked gorgeous again. Running backs Kendall Milton (104 yards on nine carries) and Daijun Edwards (62 yards on seven) tore into vast open spaces. Wide receiver Dillon Bell (five catches, 86 yards) made sideline catches normal people couldn’t make. A trick play busted, so wide receiver Ladd McConkey, having caught the opening, backward pass, made a fierce set of devilish cuts 33 yards to the end zone for a 27-yard touchdown. Georgia looked bigger and faster. Florida State looked doomed after a breakthrough year.

The venerable Rose Bowl has a lush neighbor you’ve probably never heard of

Just four Saturdays earlier at the Prince O’ Whales, Darlington and Blatt had finished watching amid a throng as the Seminoles weathered Louisville, 16-6, to reach 13-0. They had gone to their phones and researched Rose Bowl tickets. Now eternally nutty college football had given them something different, something no fans had known before even if all fans had to know it as possible: an unbeaten Power Five conference champion ranked an aching fifth after a thorny brain teaser of a committee decision.

Now they had 42-3 at halftime, and soon they headed back in to watch more.

“It’s not over yet,” Blatt said, smiling.

“We’re a fourth-quarter team!” Darlington cracked.