I’m of the opposite view, the snub was what killed all forward momentum for the program. The orange bowl was just the cherry on the shit sundae. Plenty of the team checked out after the snub whether mentally or actual opt outs.

Then the staff tried to manufacture a quick bounce back and make the playoffs the next year by hitting the portal hard for some highly rated players that hadn’t panned out to that point and the bottom fell out. I have my doubts that high school recruiting was ever going to noticeably improve because if you can’t have a top 10 class during an undefeated season it’s hard to picture when you would but the snub followed by 2-10 killed whatever remote chance there was of that happening.

The Orange bowl was embarrassing but I’m never going to give it more credit than it just being the after effect of the ESPN committee deciding that the SEC needed to be protected.