Why Florida's loss to Auburn is misleading
First of all, congratulations on getting to the NC game, it should be a great match between our teams. Now, there are lots of arguments about how Michigan deserves to be in the NC game over Florida because they lose by 3 @OSU while UF lost by 10 @Auburn. I'm assuming that many of them never watched the Auburn game, but I watched both, and here are some critical differences:
1) The OSU game's score was misleading. Michigan was down by 10+ for most of the second half, they only scored 7 fairly meaningless points off of a dubious PI call late in the game, making the game appear closer than it actually was.
2) The Auburn game's score was also misleading. Florida was trailing by 1 and had a 3rd and goal at the Auburn 6 yard line, then a terrible call happened. Leak was about to get sacked, so he threw a pass at the feet of TE Tate Casey, #84, to avoid the sack. However, it was ruled that he fumbled, costing UF a game-tying FG attempt and gave AU great field position("fumble" was returned to the AU 40 yd line) to tack on a FG. Here's a great picture of the play:
As you can clearly see, the ball had already left Leak's hand and was headed toward the feet of #84. How could the replay official miss it? I mean, that's CONCLUSIVE evidence that it was an incompleted pass, not a fumble! This not only cost Florida a chance to score the go-ahead FG, but also basically gave AU a free FG to make their lead 4-points, forcing UF to go for a TD.
Anyway, as time was running out, UF was down by 4 with a few seconds left. So the offense just lateraled the ball around trying to get the TD, but it dropped and some AU player picked it up and returned it for a TD with no time left. The XP wasn't needed so the game ended with UF down by 10.
So basically, a terrible call put UF in a terrible position, and a meaningless TD was tacked on after the clock striked 0:00 to make the score look worse.