Looking Back

By Jim Joanos

As we begin the 2013 Florida State University football season there is a great deal of optimism. The team is coming off a twelve win, two loss 2012 season which included the championship of the Atlantic Coast Conference and a victory in the Orange Bowl game. While a number of the outstanding members of last year’s team either graduated or left early to go professional, those returning along with the new recruits seem very capable of doing well. Along with the freshness of a new season, it seems like a good time to look back in ten year snapshots to see how the program has developed through the years.

SEVENTY YEARS AGO, 1943: “NO FOOTBALL.” From 1905 until 1947, Florida State, then known as “Florida State College for Women,” was a women’s college, consequently, there was no intercollegiate football.

1953 Team Photo

SIXTY YEARS AGO, 1953: “MAGIC IN BELIEVING.” After becoming co-educational in 1947 and beginning football again, by 1953 FSU had gone through several years of very successful “small college” football and had decided in 1952 to advance to the larger arena of big time football. The first season of that effort had not been a good one (1-8-1 record). For the 1953 season, FSU brought in a new coach, Tom Nugent, a wonderful showman and innovator with great optimism. The inventor of the I-formation and the typewriter huddle, Nugent began his tenure with a great speech urging the fans and players to believe that there was magic in believing. There was positive response and the team went on to a 5-5 with victories over some good teams. Nugent would go to some pretty good years thereafter.

1963 Team Photo

FIFTY YEARS AGO, 1963: THE “DARKNESS BEFORE THE SUNRISE.” It was the fourth season of Bill Peterson’s tenure as head coach. College football rules had just been changed allowing free substitution. While the team only went 4-5-1 for the season, the foundation was laid for the Seminoles to transition from a defense oriented team to the wide-open pass crazy plan that would become Peterson’s trademark as a pioneer in that style of college offense. Junior quarterback Steve Tensi and wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff would hone the skills during the 1963 season that would take the college football by storm the following (1964) season when the team would go 9-1-1 and obtain its first ever participation and victory in the Gator Bowl (against Okolahoma).

1973 Team Photo

FORTY YEARS AGO, 1973: “DISASTER.” In Larry Jones’ last of three seasons as head coach, the team lost all eleven of its games for the worst record in the history of the program. Following seasons of 8-4 and 7-4, more than two dozen players left the program leaving the cupboard bare. Following that season, it would take four years and the second season (1977) after Bobby Bowden’s arrival for FSU to once again attain a winning season.

THIRTY YEARS AGO, 1983: “ON THE WAY UP.” The 1983 season fell in the midst of Bobby Bowden’s leadership in carrying FSU to the higher echelons of college football. That team went 8-4 and beat North Carolina in the Peach Bowl. Among its members were a number who acclaimed a great deal of fame at FSU, including Greg Allen, Alphonso Carreker, Jamie Dukes, Jessie Hester, David Ponder (Christian’s father), Eric Thomas, and Joe Wessel, to name a few.

1993 Team Photo

TWENTY YEARS AGO, 1993: “NATIONAL CHAMPIONS.” After “knocking on the door” each season from 1987 on, the Seminoles won their first national championship ever in 1993. Quarterback Charlie Ward also become the first ever FSU player to win the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s best football player. Head Coach Bobby Bowden became the “darling” of all of college football. It was an amazing event for a university that had gone from “no football” as late as 1946 and had a no-win season only twenty years earlier.

TEN YEARS AGO, 2003: “GOOD BUT NOT GREAT.” After a second national championship in 1999 and falling just one victory short the following season, the Seminoles had broken their fourteen-year stretch of finishing in the top five of the Associated Press poll each year in 2001. In 2003, the team went 10-3, won the Atlantic Coast Conference but lost to Miami at the Orange Bowl game at the end of the season. Gone were the days among the nation’s top five teams and looking back you might say that was during the “beginning of the end” of the Bowden era which would end with the 2009 season.

2013 Team Photo

THIS YEAR, 2013: “???.” So here we are with a brand new season. Jimbo Fisher, as head coach is leading the team into his fourth season. The Seminoles were back in the top ten of the nation’s elite at the end of last season. There is a great deal of promise and excitement. See you at the games!