Seminole Madness: Picking the top player in FSU football history
With the NCAA men's basketball tournament canceled this season, we've all lost out on the chance to fill out brackets and predict the best of the best in college basketball.
With that in mind, we hope our Seminole Madness field of 64 tournament will at least fill part of that void: It's the Warchant.com Bracket Challenge.
Beginning Wednesday, Warchant will ask fans to choose the No. 1 player in Florida State football history.
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We've broken down the field into four 16-team brackets:
* Offensive Playmakers
* Defensive Playmakers
* Linemen (offensive and defensive)
* Legends/Special Teams
The first three "regions" are pretty self-explanatory. The final one is a combination of eight Seminole "legends," which we've defined as players who graduated by 1985 (just before the Dynasty era really began), and eight special-teams players.
The special-teams players were broken down further into two four-team brackets -- kickers/punters and "specialists" (return men or players who specialized in blocking kicks).
The No. 1 seeds are a who's who of college football excellence -- Charlie Ward in the Offensive Playmakers division, Deion Sanders in Defensive Playmakers, Walter Jones in Linemen, and Ron Simmons in Legends. In the special-teams categories, Sebastian Janikowski is the top seed among kickers, and Greg Reid is the top seed among specialists.
* CLICK HERE for a printable bracket
(Note: Players who already held a spot in one of the other categories were not eligible to also be selected as specialists. That is why Sanders, Peter Warrick and Terrell Buckley are not listed there.)
The seedings for the tournament were determined through balloting of three members of the Warchant staff -- Gene Williams, Ira Schoffel and Corey Clark -- and ESPN-Tallahassee's Jeff Cameron.
Because Florida State has produced so many incredible players through the decades, that process was incredibly challenging. Senior writer Corey Clark discussed that difficulty in the video above:
"Not only the seeding process, that was really tough ... but you wouldn't believe the names that got off the list," Clark said. "It's just incredible. ... There might be a Heisman Trophy winner that's a 6 seed. That's how many offensive playmakers there have been at Florida State over the years.
"It was really, really hard to cut it down. And there were multiple, multiple first-round [NFL draft] picks that aren't even in this contest. That's how loaded Florida State's been over the years."
Voting will begin on Wednesday on our Tribal Council message board and also through our official account on Twitter (@Warchant). There also will be a Debate Thread posted for each matchup on the Tribal Council, where we will award a $25 e-card to GarnetandGold.com for the person who makes the best argument for their choice in each category.
Stay connected with Warchant.com throughout the tournament as we find out who the fans believe is the No. 1 player in FSU football history.
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Talk about this story with other Florida State football fans in the Tribal Council