Florida State's winning streak and title chances were fumbled away on Thursday night. (USATSI)
Florida State's winning streak and title chances were fumbled away on Thursday night. (USATSI)

PASADENA, Calif. -- The beast finally died the same way it had lived (it up) these past two seasons -- spectacularly.

Excuse America if it didn't storm the field.

The Florida State beast that ruled college football -- amid slime and success -- the past two seasons, is dead. Long may Oregon's Blur purr.

The Ducks' 59-20 win over FSU in the first-ever College Football Playoff semifinal will be known as much for what Oregon did as for what the Seminoles didn't.

For FSU that would be taking care of the ball, pressuring the Heisman Trophy winner. Mostly, prove that all those comebacks were part of their character, not a character flaw.

But ultimately that was it. FSU was as questionable on the field Thursday as it has been at times off it in the past two seasons.

Florida State didn't just turn the ball over, it did it with flair. There was an art to it.

"I never thought I would slip, throw the ball backward."

That was Jameis Winston describing how he cut, stumbled backward in the third quarter without being hit, threw the ball up the air, then watched Oregon's Tony Washington rumble 58 yards with his "fumble."

The play defined the game, Jameis' game. Five FSU turnovers led to five touchdowns which led to the most points ever scored in a Rose Bowl. Which, of course, led to the end of that 29-game winning streak that hung by a thread so many times this season the word "luck" crept into the conversation.

"It hurts badder than whatever you can imagine," said Winston who lost for the first time in his career as a starter. "But the good thing is we live to fight another day."

Huh? Someone has to clue Jameis in. This is it. Season over. Streak over. Legacy sealed. He kept talking about the future, like there was another game to play.

"But it ain't over yet," he reiterated.

If he's talking about coming back for another year, don't insult our intelligence, kid. Sorry, but the beast has officially expired. The Noles couldn't have looked badder. That includes their manners. About 90 percent of the Noles went directly the locker room after the final gun without shaking hands. 

To his credit, Jameis wasn't one one them. He lingered on the field, then saluted fans with his helmet as he left it. 

Maybe these Noles were too full of themselves. Maybe they just weren't good enough to be here. Oregon had one more touchdown (eight in all) than FSU had fumbles (seven).

Maybe the College Football Playoff selection committee was right, seeding the nation's only undefeated team third. The Noles couldn't live up to a 2013 that saw them set a modern scoring record. The Noles got here in the same venue, a year later overcoming total deficits of 72 points in eight games.

Fans chanted "one more year" at Winston, but that's about how long it would take for Florida State to make this comeback.

There was no such, well, luck this time. Not by a long shot. Winston himself could have been blamed for giving it away, both fumbling and throwing a pick -- both of which led to touchdowns. Count Winston coming up inches short on a fourth-down run near the goal line in the first half and there were really three "turnovers."

That was a mere microcosm. Florida State lost four of those seven fumbles. Those weren't exactly uncharacteristic for a team that now has committed the second-most turnovers (32) in the country.

What was uncharacteristic was Winston in the postgame.

"If everybody in this room just want to be real with themselves, this game could have went either way," he said to reporters. "We turned the ball over a lot. Just be real with yourself right now. We beat ourself."

They didn't take kindly to that in the Oregon locker room. Could have gone either way? You can't just unfumble. And even if you take those turnovers away, do they make up for a 39-point deficit and the most yards ever surrendered (639) in a Rose Bowl?

"That's pretty immature on his part, I'd have to say," left tackle Jake Fisher said of Winston. "To put up a loss like that, I don't know if you can downplay us, but they've doing that all week."

At least three Ducks said they'd heard rumblings all week about being "soft."

"It wasn't the media, it was the [Florida State] players," center Hroniss Grasu said. "What I love more is to keep proving people wrong, being called soft. Our team is the only team that can stop us. We beat them physically, we beat them mentally and our coaches outcoached them."

As the Ducks head to their second national championship game in four years, they were anything but soft. That 81st-ranked defense was being gouged midway through the third quarter. FSU was on pace to run 100 plays.

Winston had just tossed an 18-yard scoring pass to Travis Rudolph. Then Marcus Mariota -- the more recent Heisman winner in this game -- found freshman Darren Carrington for a 56-yard score when FSU defensive back Tyler Hunter fell down.

Five plays later FSU freshman sensation Dalvin Cook fumbled for the second time after a 10-yard run. That set up another Mariota touchdown pass to Carrington. At one point the Ducks scored six consecutive times they touched the ball, counting the turnovers. The rout was on.

"Losing isn't in my vocabulary," Winston said. "I ain't felt this way in a long time."

This is the feeling he'll have to remember for the rest of his career. The Ducks turned another corner with a roster that features seven freshmen in the two-deep. Carrington was one of them catching seven balls for a career-high 165 yards.

On defense, redshirt freshman Chris Seisay had to start at cornerback. The best thing that can be said about him was that he wasn't noticed. Seisay was steady place of All-American Ifo Ekpre-Olomu.

"This game proves we can play compete with anybody in the country," Seisay said. "Some people said we can't play against teams that are strong, [that] we're not strong enough, we're all about speed, we're small.

"We silenced all the haters."

At least for the next 11 days. Starting this year, there's another game to play.