Gators and `Noles have different history, different emotions about SEC, ACC

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

We had a good bit of fun this spring on the Bobby Bowden Tour with a letter the Tallahassee Democrat published last January after the Sugar Bowl. It was written by a disgruntled Gator who sniffed, "I can assure you that three Southeastern Conference Championships in four years is far sweeter than any victory over FSU."

Our response, of course, was A) It's not three championships in four years; they have won three championships in sixty-two years, and B) How would he know? Florida has beaten FSU only once in the last nine tries.

Oh, how we hoot and whoop and make raspberry sounds when our Gator friends tell us we're not the big game on their schedule. When a Gator fan looks a Seminole fan in the eye and says winning the conference is more important than beating FSU, the `NOLE finds it difficult - no, impossible - to believe.

But, it is true, and the reality of that is a complete mystery to FSU fans. Fact is, the Gators, like alumni of most old-line schools in the Southeastern, or Big-10, or Pac-10, or Big-8 Conferences, have a "conference mentality" that is deeply woven into the fabric of their genes.

We Seminole fans just don't get it, and the reason has to do with one of the most remarkable feats in college football.

FSU has been a member of two conferences in our 49-year collegiate athletic history: the Dixie Conference (1948-50), and the ACC (began in 1991). In these six-going-on-seven-seasons, the Seminoles have been Conference Champions every year and have never lost a game!

Apologizing to the defeated

In only their second year of football, the Seminoles joined the Dixie Conference and proceeded to roll unimpeded over the likes of Millsaps, Mississippi College, Tampa, Stetson, and Howard College. Howard, by the way, was led during that era by a Little All-American quarterback named Bobby Bowden.

After three years, the other teams got bored, or went broke shipping the hardware to Tallahassee, and voted to disband.

Now, more than four decades later, FSU finds itself again blessed with an embarrassment of success. At this writing, FSU leads the nation in scoring offense with a frightening 64-points-per-game average. Our average margin of victory in ACC contests is about five touchdowns, and some opposing coaches break out in hives and start to hyperventilate when they cross the Florida line headed south to Doak Campbell.

Stung by partisan criticism from some up-country sportswriters, Coach Bowden penned a letter of apology to Duke for appearing to run up the score. The hapless Blue Devils were subsequently blown out again, this time by Maryland. Maybe some sort of inter-Conference pro forma will emerge: anything above 70 points requires a full blown letter of apology; less than seventy but more than forty requires only a Care Bear balloon and a personal note.

Old grudges and long memories

Teams that have been members of a conference for a long time have won and lost enough to have developed deep rooted rivalries. Old grudges are reborn when the teams, and fans, meet every fall. Old Miss alumni still feel they were cheated out of the national title on Halloween night at LSU in 1957; Florida fans will never forgive Tennessee for soaking the field with water the night before the 1928 game and denying the Gators the SEC title.

Simply put, we have not rivals yet in the ACC. We've never lost. Our "Conference" is Miami, Florida and the occasional Notre Dame. Lord knows, we've lost and won enough within that circle to make the heart's blood pound on game day. So far, the ACC has been little more than a distraction, a scrimmage to prepare us for the regular season.

It looked much different going into the ACC in 1991. Clemson had clobbered us here in 1989, the year after we nipped them with the Puntrooskie in Death Valley. And, prior to 1992, we had failed to defeat Georgia Tech in thirteen tries. With Tech as the 1990 National Champions, and Clemson as a perennial powerhouse, the Jackets and Tigers looked like natural rivals for us. Bob Goin even arranged the schedule so that we would never play both of them away in the same year.

What happened?

What happened was nothing more complicated than a coaching change. Bobby Ross, who led Tech back into national prominence, left for the pros. Danny Ford, who had led Clemson to a 1981 national title, simply left. Both programs plunged into an ever darkening whirlpool of despair, an instructive image for Seminoles who wish to contemplate the eventual end of the Bobby Bowden era.

Now, it is being whispered in the anterooms of the ACC that Florida State's dominion is "bad for the Conference."

No need to hold back

Let me tell you what would be "bad for the Conference." What would be disastrous for the ACC is for FSU to begin regularly dropping games to Miami and Florida, and to fade from national prominence. It was FSU's clout that helped include the ACC in the Bowl Coalition. It is not unthinkable that without FSU the ACC might have gone the way of the Southwest Conference, its various members spinning off into greater and lesser leagues.

FSU gives the ACC entry into the Florida market, rich in high school talent and television sets. There are more major media outlets in Florida than in all the other ACC states combined.

We do not need to worry that we are winning too much, or that we are winning by too great a margin. We need only worry if we are not taking advantage of every opportunity to be as successful as possible, and that we conduct our affairs honorably and with good grace.

We will lose soon enough, and that first loss is likely to be followed not too long after by a second. That's what generally happens once the spell is broken.

For now, relax and enjoy the magic. These are great days.