FSU Seminoles

The good ol' days returned to the Sunshine State in 2012, as both Florida and Florida State were nationally relevant again. Both teams finished ranked in the AP Top 10 for the first time since the 2000 season as Florida State won 12 games, and Florida won 11.

But who had the better season? Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi asked that question earlier this week. Now, SEC blogger Edward Aschoff and I are here to settle the debate once and for all.

Adelson says: Chop over Chomp

The answer to this question is as easy as 1+1. There is no way Florida had a better year than Florida State. Not with that big fat L tattooed all over Florida. Make that a double LL tattoo: LOUISVILLE LOSS.

Here is what Florida State did in 2012 that the mighty Gators did not do:

• Florida State won its BCS game, avoiding the shame and embarrassment that still stings in Gainesville.
• Florida State tied the school record for wins in a season with 12.
• Florida State won its conference.

That is a winning trifecta right there, and should deem any argument from the SEC moot.

What? Florida beat Florida State head-to-head? Noles fans cannot hear you because they have championship rings plugging up their ears. Still one of my favorite comeback lines of all time.

I watched that game in Tally. Florida was the better team that day, and deserved to win. Florida had the more surprising season, too, considering nobody expected the Gators in a BCS game. Will Muschamp did a terrific job turning around a seven-win team into an 11-win team. I give them credit for all that.

But a head-to-head win against Florida State does not automatically mean the Gators had a better season. A season where expectations were exceeded is not better than a year in which every single expectation was met. Did folks think Florida State could compete for a national championship this year? Yes. Was it disappointing when Florida State fell short of that? Yes.

That disappointment does not define a season, however. At the start of every single season, coaches will tell you the goal is to win a conference championship. Bigger goals follow. Florida may have beaten Florida State on the scoreboard, but the Seminoles won in the much bigger category.

They are champions, two times over.

Aschoff says: Chomp, chomp!

If you turned on your computer for the first time since August and saw just the final records of Florida and Florida State, I guess you could say the Seminoles had a better season in 2012. If you look at the final games for both schools, you’d probably go with the Noles again, considering they blew out Northern Illinois in the Discover Orange Bowl, while Florida was beaten down by Louisville in the Allstate Sugar Bowl.

Seems easy enough, but when you look at the total body of work, Florida clearly had the better year in 2012. For starters, this team wasn’t even supposed to win nine games. It was an eight-win team at best but won 11, was a win away from going to the SEC title game in Atlanta, went to a BCS bowl game and handily beat Florida State IN Tallahassee in the process. Despite having the worst passing game in the SEC, the Gators went 7-1 in the country’s toughest football conference, with that lone loss coming to a Georgia team that was 5 yards away from taking Alabama’s spot in the BCS title game. Oh, and Florida was a missed Pittsburgh field goal away from playing in the national championship.

Florida State was supposed to be in a BCS bowl. The Noles were supposed to be national title contenders and they fell flat against NC State (the same NC State that was pummeled by Vanderbilt in the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl) and were roughed up 37-26 by Florida at home. If anything, 2012 was a major disappointment for the Noles.

Florida took down Johnny Football IN College Station and beat up LSU at home before blowing out South Carolina by 33. Florida beat four top-10 teams with basically an elite defense and a running game led by a first-year starter in Mike Gillislee.

Florida had some ugly wins, but this team found ways to win and ended the regular season No. 3 in the BCS standings.

Did I mention that Florida did all of this in the SEC, while Florida State underachieved in the ACC?

Heather Dinich talks about who needs a win more in Tallahassee.

Who will transform tomorrow with a huge performance in Week 13?

We are going with a duo: Florida State defensive ends Tank Carradine and Bjoern Werner. Given the way both have played this season, there is no doubt Florida will have its hands full trying to slow them both down. And that will be a major problem for an offense that has not been very productive this season.

The No. 4 Gators have struggled all season on offense, from scoring points, to establishing their passing game to protecting the quarterback. Florida has allowed 32 sacks, ranking No. 104 in the nation. Carradine and Werner are the most prolific sack duo in the country. So yes, that is going to be a major problem for the Gators to solve.

Just look at what these two players have done so far:

• Carradine leads the team in total tackles with 69, and has 11.5 tackles for loss, 10.5 sacks and eight hurries. Werner has 33 tackles -- 14.5 are tackles for loss, with 9.5 sacks. Werner has seven pass breakups and five hurries.
• Carradine leads the ACC in sacks, and Werner ranks second. The last time a pair of teammates finished the year ranked 1-2 was in 2005, when Mario Williams and Manny Lawson did it for NC State.
• Only three pairs of FSU defensive players have ever combined for more sacks in a season than Werner and Carradine.
• Werner and Carradine are one of only two sets of teammates in the top 15 for sacks in the FBS.

“They’re very athletic, they’ve got girth, they’ve got size, they’ve got speed, they’ve recruited," Gators coach Will Muschamp said. "They’ve got a lot of depth. They throw a lot of guys in there who play and play well, and when you lose a guy like Brandon Jenkins to start the season and you’re able to still play at a high level and rush the passer well with four guys rushing, that says something about your recruiting. So they do a good job. They’re very similar to what we’ve seen in our league."

With all due respect, Werner and Carradine are better than what Muschamp has seen in the SEC this season, and a huge key in this game.

Back in March, I did a three-city tour around Florida, stopping in Gainesville, Tallahassee and Miami with a very serious question:

When will the state of Florida rise again?

At the time, Florida State finished 2011 as the top-ranked team among the Big Three, at No. 23. Will Muschamp was getting heat from Florida fans after a disappointing season. Miami was under the cloud of an NCAA investigation. (And still is.)

Perhaps only Muschamp and Jimbo Fisher anticipated the rise back up would happen in just a handful of months. Indeed, No. 4 Florida and No. 10 Florida State meet Saturday as Top 10 teams for the first time since 2000. That probably has surprised many college football observers, but not Fisher.

“You have great programs, you have great availability of players, both groups have gotten good players and they’ve got a great staff and I feel we’ve got a great staff,” Fisher said Wednesday on the ACC coaches call. “Things are never as good as they seem, they’re never as bad as they seem. We knew we would be back, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit they’re back.”

Simply put, this rivalry is better when national championship stakes are on the line. Thirteen times between 1990-2000, both were ranked in the Top 10. They played for the national championship in 1996, after the regular-season finale between the two featured No. 2 Florida State upsetting No. 1 Florida.

In fact, six times in those 13 meetings the lowe- ranked team won the game. Several times national championship hopes were dashed -- aside from the title game in the Sugar Bowl. In 1997, Florida upset No. 2 and unbeaten Florida State, in a stunning upset, thanks to the way Steve Spurrier rotated his two quarterbacks.

Those were the good ol’ days. Then we saw a streak of five times within seven seasons that only one team was ranked headed into the game, taking away much of the luster surrounding the matchup, especially from a national perspective.

But now here we are again, with national championship hopes on the line for the Gators. If they can win and Notre Dame loses, there could be another potential SEC vs. SEC national championship game. If Florida State wins, the Noles would have their first three-game winning streak in the series since 1998-2000.

Fisher has yet to lose to Florida or Miami, going 5-0 against the two in-state rivals. In fact, the Seminoles have gone 1,091 days since losing to a team from Florida.

“When you’re both having outstanding seasons like we both are it definitely does (add something extra), because it has more national ramifications," Fisher said. “But our own personal deal, no. We take pride in playing against Florida much like they take pride in playing against us, but from a fan standpoint and everything that goes on, hopefully it’s back to where it should be, where it’s like this every year. It is a good thing, and I’m not against it, I promise.”

You really have to dig deep to find the last time Florida-Florida State really meant something in the grand scheme of college football.

People were using MSN Messenger and thought Fred Durst was actually cool. TRL and trucker hats were all the craze.

It was the year 2000 and college football fans were probably carrying around a Ja Rule CD in their cars. (It’s OK. We all have our faults.)

It was also the last time Florida and Florida State met as top-10 BCS opponents.

This was one of college football’s true gems. Thanks to Steve Spurrier and Bobby Bowden, from 1990 to 2000 these two teams met 13 times when both were ranked in the top 10, including the 1996 Sugar Bowl for the national championship. These two programs were mammoths and are Nos. 1 and 2 nationally when it comes to consecutive bowl streaks. Florida State is No. 1 (30) and Florida is second (21).

The rivalry took a bit of a nosedive when Bowden and his Noles teams fell off during the 2000s and Urban Meyer arrived at Florida. Under Meyer, the Gators won five straight, as they stayed nationally relevant, while FSU flirted with mediocrity until Jimbo Fisher took over in 2010.

But this rivalry is back, as No. 4 Florida (10-1, 7-1 SEC) heads to Tallahassee to face No. 10 Florida State (10-1) in a game that has major BCS implications on the line.

If Florida wins, the Gators are likely BCS-bound. With some help from USC, they could back their way into the national championship game. Florida State is very much on the outside when it comes to the BCS title game, but a win and a ton of help could move the Noles closer to Miami.

The magnitude of Saturday's matchup hit the Gators well before they returned to the locker room after beating Jacksonville State.

“As soon as that clock hit zero, you couldn’t help but think about Florida State,” fifth-year senior defensive tackle Omar Hunter said. "If you’re a Gator, you grow up not liking Florida State. I’m sure it’s the same way with them. That’s just what you’re taught. When you go to Florida State, you’re anti-Gators. That’s just what it is.”

Outside of the BCS implications, major pride is on the line for both teams. There’s real bad blood here. Players on both sides know each other, but they refuse to talk during the regular season and usually hurl barbs at each other when they do speak during the offseason.

The hatred is still there, even if the success isn't.

The Gators are also hurting after back-to-back losses to the Noles. After winning six straight over FSU, Florida dropped the last two, getting outscored 52-14. Florida enters this weekend with an offense going backward, and quarterback Jeff Driskel is hobbled. He sprained his ankle two weeks ago.

That’s not good when you consider how good the Noles have been on defense, even without star defensive end Brandon Jenkins for basically the entire season. FSU ranks first nationally in total defense (236.3 yards per game) and rushing defense (70.6). The Noles are allowing 2.3 yards per rush and 3.7 yards per play.

In the past five games -- two of them against Louisiana-Lafayette and Jacksonville State -- Florida has averaged just 278.4 yards. The Gators are near the bottom of the SEC in total offense (332.9) and are last in passing (143.4).

That doesn’t bode well for Florida, but as coach Will Muschamp continues to point out, it's all about wins, and somehow the Gators have 10 of those.

“Like I said Saturday, understand who you are and where you are, and it may not be where you want to be at times and it's frustrating at times, but at the end of the day, you've got to do what it takes to win football games and that's what we're judged on at the end of that,” Muschamp said.

While the offense has sputtered, the defense has been terrific, ranking near the top with the Noles. It can be irritating to see the offense fail, but Florida’s defenders love putting the game in their hands.

“That’s how you go into every day if you’re a great defense,” Hunter said. “You want to put everything on your shoulders. You don’t want to go into the game relying on the offense to score. You want to score on the defense. That’s what we’re taught here at Florida and that’s what we try to win by -- defense and special teams.”

Offensive issues aside, a lot is riding on Saturday. The BCS might be at the forefront of the conversation, but as far as the Gators are concerned, the only letters they’re focused on are F-S-U.

“It’s Florida-Florida State. It’s more than what’s just going on in the BCS,” Hunter said. “It’s bragging rights for the state of Florida. It’s going to be a very big game and it’s one of my favorite games to play in.”