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 Friday, December 13, 2002
Sunshine State battle tops all
By Marc Connolly
BCSfootball.com
Rivalry Week has engulfed the college football landscape with talk of tradition, throw-out-the-record cliches, and, well, hate -- not the type that a teenage girl harbors towards her dad because he wouldn't let her go to the mall, but pure, inexorable hatred.
We're not here to question whether Auburn loathes Alabama any less than Wolverine fans despise the Buckeyes. We're also not here to say which rivalry is the truest in every sense of the word. How does one decipher the impassioned sentiment a Harvard broker feels for a Yale M.D., from the competitive fire brewing inside a 60-year-old West Point grad when he stares at the Midshipmen across the stadium every first Saturday of December? You simply cannot.
|  | | Bobby Bowden's Seminoles might be dangerous as a touchdown underdog at home against Miami. |
Yet, no matter what you consider to be the Grand Poobah of all rivalries, it is hard to argue that the annual Sunshine State hatefest between Florida and Florida State isn't the greatest on-field rivalry of the past 10 years. It might not be the case just in college football either, but perhaps all of college athletics.
The biggest challenger to such a title has to be the two, or often times, three-game series on Tobacco Road's hardcourts of Duke and North Carolina. Aside from a few down years in the mid-'90s for both teams, it has become virtually impossible to catch one of these colossal showdowns without one team being ranked in the top five, if not both. Between the two schools, they have the same amount of national championships (3) between them in the '90s as Florida and Florida State.
Yet, how can one compare a college basketball rivalry and its impact to that of a virtual once-a-year playoff game in football? Even if UNC gets pounded by the Blue Devils in both regular season tilts, there's always the ACC Tournament in early March to get even. If not, who cares, as you'd have to nearly fall off the conference map to get shunned out of the Big Dance. Once in the field of 64, nothing prevents such rivals to play for a fourth time, either.
My point: Even the greatest rivalry in college hoops cannot begin to compare to those in college football due to the increased importance on every single game.
And the fact that Florida-Florida State is played in late November every year, it has more of an impact on the national championship picture than any Miami-Florida State matchup could ever carry due to its Columbus Day weekend date. That was the case even before the 'Canes fell into relative obscurity during the middle of the decade.
"From 1983 to about '93, it would come down to Florida State-Miami," said Bobby Bowden, whose record against Steve Spurrier-coached Gator squads is 7-4-1, "But we would always get it solved early in the year. Since Steve has come to Florida, during the '90s, it has just been every year. Both of us are in the top five, one ahead of the other and it has come down to a very important game."
Along with turkey and stuffing, Democrat versus Republican and the gratuitously early playing of "White Christmas" in malls everywhere, the knockout game between these two powers is a rite of November. The only thing that changes is the setting. On the odd years, Garnet and Gold faithful tiptoe their way around the menacing Swamp in Gainesville. And on the even years, the ever-annoying chomp motions of a Gator fan permeate the immaculate grounds of Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee.
In short, due to its late-season date and impact on the national title, it's this generation's Nebraska-Oklahoma.
Once again, a potential spot in the National Championship Game is on the line, with the winner gaining the inside track to take on either undefeated Oklahoma or perhaps Miami, depending on how the top-ranked Sooners fare in the Big XII Championship Game on December 2.
"We're in the same situation we always seem to be in, we're 9-1 heading up there," said Steve Spurrier, who has yet to feel the spoils of victory when venturing up to that city on the panhandle.
At No. 4 in the BCS, the Gators could move all the way up to No. 2 past the Hurricanes with a victory over FSU, coupled with a triumph in the SEC Championship Game on Dec. 2. For the Seminoles, who come in to this battle toting a No. 3 ranking in the BCS and a 10-1 mark, the path to the Orange Bowl seems much clearer -- win and you're in.
"If we do beat them, the fact that they are ranked fourth in the nation, I would think that would get us back," said Bowden.
|  | | Travis Minor helped the Seminoles win 30-23 in The Swamp last year. |
Seeing either the Seminoles or Gators use this victory to move on to the national championship is something we all should be used to by now. In fact, such was the case a year ago. Florida State's 30-23 in Gainesville marked the fifth time in the last seven years that the winner of the Sunshine State rivalry went on to play in the National Championship Game.
And whether or not you believe it's the "best" rivalry, you couldn't name another that was contested as much as this one in the '90s. Due to two rematches in the 1995 and 1997 Sugar Bowl, they played each other 12 times in the decade, the most between any two programs in Division I-A over that span. What a wondrous coincidence that this just so happened to come between the first (FSU, 109-13-1) and third (Florida, 102-22-1) winningest teams in the decade.
It has brought us Heisman Trophy boys (Charlie Ward and Danny Wuerffel). It has brought us the Fifth Quarter in the French Quarter. It has brought us future household names like Jevon Kearse, as well as no-names like Marcus Outzen, whose star power glimmered for a fleeting moment due to their prowess in this game. It has also brought us a scoring margin of a mere 10 points, including the epic 31-31 contest on that Thanksgiving Weekend of '94.
It has also brought us familiarity.
Name the coach for Duke when the Blue Devils played UNC twice in 1994-95 (Pete Gaudet). While Coach K was on the sidelines the rest of the '90s, the Tar Heels had both Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge. But for Florida-FSU, it's been the same two characters.
There's the lovable, riverboat-gambling Bowden, who reeks of a certain grandfather-you-never-had quality. And patrolling the other sideline you've got the always-misunderstood, grimacing Spurrier carrying out a game plan that's as hard to decipher as why he wears such a hideous visor.
Though there's the usual hatred of all rivalries ("This is definitely the big thing today. I think families break up over this game," said senior quarterback Jesse Palmer), Florida-Florida State has transformed into more than that. All the more fitting why that "other" race for a high and mighty seat is in full tilt down in the state capital.
When Bowden was asked whether the presidential election or the Florida-FSU game was more important to those in Tallahassee, he said, "The game."
But this is no such game. Rather, it's the 45th installment of what should now be considered the greatest on-field rivalry in all of college sports.
Marc Connolly is a senior writer for ABC Sports Online.
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