Discovering the Roots of College Football’s Oldest Rivalries
Some history: Before the Civil War, the juvenile versions of the University of Florida and Florida State were twins, the seminary east of the Sewanee and the seminary west of it. In 1905, the Florida Legislature decided that the college in Gainesville would be for white boys only, the college in Tallahassee for white girls only, and the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for black students. That changed in 1947—for the white people anyway. Both UF and FSU went co-ed. Men invaded the campus of the old Florida State College for Women, and within about five minutes put together a football team, named “The Seminoles” by a campus plebiscite (“Tarpons” and “Crackers” were other mascot possibilities), and demanded to play the Gators. UF, longtime members of the mighty Southeastern Conference, reacted as if a back hills sharecropper had applied to join the country club. It took three years of negotiations, the threat of legislation and the intervention of Gov. LeRoy Collins to finally force UF to play FSU in 1958. The Gators won almost all the games in the first ten years. “Never, FSU, never!” they’d say.
They shouted “Never, FSU, never!” that afternoon in 1967 as we sat huddled with the other Seminoles at Florida Field. Then, they stopped.
FSU won 21–16, the first time a Seminole team had beaten the mighty Gators in their own house. The adults jumped up and down like puppies. My godfather said he hated that my father wasn’t there to see it. But for me, joy was, as Mark Twain says, unconfined.
I got my first taste of the pure, identity-fired rapture that comes from your tribe, who are virtuous, noble and fearless, vanquishing the tribe from down the road—who had behaved like complete and utter jackasses. After that, I was hooked on the blood rush and the tackle lust of the game—even if I was only in the fourth grade.
People like me say they bleed garnet and gold, or crimson and white or orange and blue or orange and green—physiologically unlikely, but then we don’t say we are “fans” of the Bulldogs or the Longhorns or the Wolverines or, God help us, the Horned Frogs; we talk as though we actually belong to those species, as in: “My daddy is a Bulldog, and I’m a Bulldog, but my sister went to school in Oregon and now she’s a Duck.” We are who we are because we aren’t those jerks over there in Knoxville or Ann Arbor or Starkeville or College Station or Tempe.
College football divides the universe into Us versus Them, validating Us and dissing Them. That’s the whole point. Those of us who love the game are citizens of a psychic fiefdom, a country with invisible borders. You might belong to the Auburn Family or the Wolfpack. I live in the Seminole Nation—which is ridiculous, because there’s a real Seminole Nation, populated by real Native Americans. I’m appallingly white; they’re descendants of people who refused to surrender to the genocidal Andrew Jackson, who tried to run them out of Florida.
It should be clear by now that the love of college football is a form of madness, a mental disorder that often takes hold in childhood. There’s no rational reason FSU and UF should despise each other so extravagantly. FSU and UF have a great deal in common: both red brick Gothic conglomerations set amidst the oaks of North Florida, both big state universities in smallish towns. Seen from space, Tallahassee and Gainesville look a lot alike. Yet Seminoles will tell you that there’s something fundamentally wrong, wrong at the cellular level, with Gators. Gators will tell you there’s something fundamentally wrong, wrong in the DNA, with Seminoles. Everybody’s correct. But as we limp through this unedifying election season, it might be worth clinging to the evident truth that politics is temporary—presidents come and presidents go—but college football is forever.
