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An oral history of the Florida-Florida State football rivalry

On July 30, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and the league office made a decision that had quite a butterfly effect for both Florida and Florida State. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on travel and competition, the SEC decided its members would play a 10-game, conference-only schedule.

As a result, it canceled all previously scheduled non-conference games, including annual out-of-conference rivalry series. This meant that for the first time since the series began in 1958, Florida wouldn’t take on its in-state rivals to the northwest.

The reaction from fans and former players was mixed. Adam Dubbin, a graduate of UF in classical studies in 2000 who now serves as site editor for Gators Wire, said he understood the decision even though he wasn’t thrilled with it.

“On one hand, I was disappointed because even though FSU is not very good right now, it’s still the premier in-state rivalry for Florida,” he said. “On the other hand, the coronavirus pandemic is neither a hoax nor a joke, so in my mind, the health and safety of student-athletes — who are not being financially compensated for their performances — is paramount to any sporting event, full stop.”

The decision interrupted the series, which means so much to fans on both sides, for the time being. But it’s still worth looking at how an insignificant local rivalry became not just the premier in-state rivalry, but one of the best in all of college football.

Humble beginnings

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The Florida State football program as we know it today began in 1947. But that wasn’t the first year of competition in Tallahassee.

In 1902, the school (then known as Florida State College) fielded a team that wore purple and gold for three seasons. In 1904, it claimed a state championship. But the following year, the state legislature converted Florida State College into an all-women school, and the football program ceased.

At the same time, the state abolished four smaller colleges and consolidated them into a new, all-male university in Gainesville in 1906. The school needed a football coach, and it hired former Florida State College coach Jack Forsythe as the first coach at the University of the State of Florida. It would later shorten its name to the University of Florida.

Florida State wouldn’t rejoin the picture until decades later after World War II veterans returned home and increased the supply of college students. The state made both the University of Florida and Florida State College coeducational, transforming the latter into the Florida State University we know today.

FSU quickly got to work rebuilding its football program, and it itched for a game against Florida. But the flagship university was hesitant, and it refused to schedule the Seminoles for more than a decade. A proposed bill in 1955 would have mandated the schools play each other, but it failed in the state senate. It took pressure from then-Gov. LeRoy Collins before the Gators finally scheduled FSU in 1958.

Florida dominated the early portion of the series, taking advantage of its history and resource advantage. The first six contests were all played at Florida Field, as Doak Campbell Stadium was undergoing a series of expansions. From 1958-1976, the Gators had a stranglehold on the rivalry, leading the series 16-2-1 at that point. But that success wouldn’t last long.

The rise of Bowden

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When Florida State hired Bobby Bowden to be its coach, it knew it was getting a successful one. In previous stops at Howard and West Virginia, he compiled records of 31-6 and 42-26, respectively. But the Seminoles had no way of knowing they were hiring a future legend.

Though he lost his first matchup to the Gators in 1976, he won the next four. After the 1978 season, Florida fired coach Doug Dickey and replaced him with Charley Pell.

The team was winless under Pell in 1979 and lost to the Seminoles again in 1980, but then Pell started a streak of his own. Florida rattled off six wins in a row in the rivalry from 1981-1986.

But NCAA violations caught up to Pell. He was fired and the association placed Florida under probation, a considerable setback for a program on the rise.

“The ’80s were something of a tumultuous time for Florida football, as the program was rising to prominence but kept getting tripped up by NCAA violations and penalties,” Dubbin said.

New coach Galen Hall also found himself out of a job due to NCAA violations as the program spent the latter half of the decade neutered by sanctions. FSU strung together four more consecutive wins in the aftermath.

It wasn’t until Florida hired former UF Heisman-winning quarterback Steve Spurrier as its head coach in 1990 that things started turning around.

Programs at their peak

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Spurrier wasted no time righting the ship in Gainesville. His first season, the team earned the best record in the SEC and would have won a conference championship for the first time since the league formed in 1932. But the still-sanctioned Gators were not eligible for a conference title, and they’d have to wait another year.

In 1991, 10-2 Florida finally won its first SEC Championship. That squad also earned a 14-9 win over Florida State, its first in the series since 1986. Spurrier, who won SEC titles in 1991, 1993, 1994 and 1995, was clearly building something special in Gainesville.

But in Tallahassee, Bowden had taken advantage of the head start the NCAA gave him. The Seminoles won the national championship in 1993, and Florida only managed the win in 1991 from 1986-1995.

In 1994, the Gators appeared guaranteed to knock off the defending national champions, leading 31-3 going into the fourth quarter on the road, but they allowed the Seminoles to come back, and the game ended in a 31-31 tie in what is now known as the “Choke at Doak.”

The following year, Florida finally earned another win in the series, capping off an undefeated regular season. The Gators appeared in their first national championship game that season against Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl. But they were blown out 62-24 by a Cornhuskers team generally considered to be among the best of all time.

Still, for the first time in a long time, Florida appeared to be ahead of Florida State.

The Gators entered the 1996 matchup undefeated once again, but in a No. 1 vs. No. 2 contest, FSU prevailed 24-21, seemingly ending UF’s hopes at a national championship.

But a series of fortuitous events kept the Gators season alive. Florida drew a rematch with the Seminoles in the Sugar Bowl, and with No. 4 Ohio State upsetting No. 2 Arizona State in the Rose Bowl, a win over Florida State opened the door for a national title.

It was an opportunity Florida wouldn’t let slip by.

It manhandled the Seminoles in the rematch 52-20 and won the first national championship in the program’s 90-year existence. Jacquez Green, a receiver for the Gators from 1995 to 1997, said the team was eager for a rematch.

“We felt we were the better team,” he said. “They won fair and square, but we felt we were the better team. It just so happened we got the chance to play those guys again.”

Green, who had five catches for 79 yards in the game, said he didn’t think the gameplan changed much between the two contests (other than Spurrier implementing his iconic shotgun, then a novelty in the college game).

“Once we went to the shotgun, we bought more time in the pocket to find open targets,” he said. “That was the main thing. The game plan… didn’t change much.”

Green was no stranger to making big plays against Florida State. In the following year’s game, Green caught a 58-yard pass from Doug Johnson to set up a game-winning touchdown run for Fred Taylor. The 32-29 win over No. 1 FSU spoiled its undefeated season and cost it a chance at the national championship.

“Florida State was No. 1 in just about every defensive category,” Green said. “Sacks, points allowed, yards allowed, they had All-Americans all over the defense.”

That win may be one of Florida’s best in the history of the series, but it also serves as a bittersweet marker in the history of a rivalry. It signaled the decline of the series from its best years in the mid-1990s.

Florida State won the next three contests and captured its second national title behind the arm of future Heisman-winning quarterback Chris Weinke in 1999. The Gators ended that winning streak in 2001 with a 37-13 win. But following that season, Spurrier departed for the NFL’s Washington Redskins, and the peak of the rivalry had officially come to a close.

A polarized present

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The last two decades of the rivalry have been one-sided, with one team dominating it for years a time. Following Spurrier’s exit, the Gators hired Ron Zook, an NFL assistant coach who also served as an assistant to Spurrier in the early 1990s.

The program stagnated under Zook’s leadership, falling from a 10-2 season in Spurrier’s last year to 8-5 finishes in 2002 and 2003. In 2004, Zook was fired after a road loss to an unranked Mississippi State team.

But the problems weren’t just appearing in Gainesville. As the Bobby Bowden era entered its twilight years in Tallahassee, the Seminoles had fallen off a bit from their championship-winning ways from just a few years before.

On Nov. 20, 2004, the Gators entered Doak Campbell Stadium to face No. 10 FSU led by Zook, who had already been fired and knew he would not be coaching in Florida’s bowl game. The same day, Florida State was dedicating Bobby Bowden Field.

UF pulled off the improbable 20-13 upset, leading Gators fans to forever refer to the field at Doak as “Ron Zook Field.” The win was just the second in the series since 1997.

Florida replaced Zook with Utah’s Urban Meyer, one of college football’s top up-and-coming coaches. Bowden struggled to keep up with rising programs across the country in his final seasons. As a result, control of the rivalry was ripe for the picking when Meyer arrived in Gainesville.

When the Gators beat the Seminoles for the second year in a row in Meyer’s inaugural season in 2005, it marked the first of several long win streaks in the modern history of the rivalry.

Meyer’s Florida team won a national championship in his second season in 2006 and repeated as champions in 2008, taking the lead in titles over FSU for the first time. From 2006-09, Florida beat its in-state rivals by a combined score of 148-51.

But there was another changing of the guard in the new decade. Bowden retired following the 2009 season and was replaced by longtime offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher, who had been considered the “coach-in-waiting.” Fisher beat a Gators team that struggled in 2010, ending a six-year losing streak for the Seminoles.

Meyer, who took a leave of absence before the 2010 season after a health scare in 2009, left for good following the season. His replacement, Will Muschamp, won just once during his four-year tenure (a road victory in 2012).

UF’s coaching carousel continued to spin, as it fired Muschamp and hired Colorado State coach Jim McElwain in 2015. McElwain won the SEC East his first two seasons, but he lost to FSU both years. He didn’t even make it to that game his third year, as he was dismissed following a loss to Georgia.

Things have turned around in the series again, though. Fisher left FSU for greener pastures at Texas A&M in 2018, and his successor, Willie Taggart, was fired after two seasons. The Gators ended a five-game losing streak to FSU in Dan Mullen’s first season. UF won again in blowout fashion last year facing a Florida State team led by an interim coach.

The non-competitive nature of the rivalry over the last couple of decades has certainly taken some luster off the historical significance of the series. Younger fans don’t have memories of those games in the ’90s. In the meantime, several conference rivalries have become more prominent.

“I would say (Florida State is) behind LSU and Georgia,” Chris Bevard, a senior sports management student at the University of Florida, said. “But that’s mainly because Georgia recently has beat us three times in a row. If that never happened, I would say FSU would be a bigger rivalry.”

Florida appears poised for dominance in the series for the near future. This season, the Gators are squarely in the College Football Playoff race during Mullen’s third season. Meanwhile, Florida State is just 2-6 as it attempts to rebuild under new coach Mike Norvell.

But if there’s one lesson that can be learned from the history of this rivalry, it’s that one of its participants can only stay down for so long. Green thinks Florida’s dominance could be short-lived.

“They’ll be back,” he said. “Once coach Norvell gets his system in place, they’re going to get better and better.”

Editor’s note: Site Editor Adam Dubbin was interviewed for this article, which was originally composed by the author for ESPN Gainesville. 

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