Discovering the Roots of College Football’s Oldest Rivalries

 

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.

Denied at UF & FSU: The New Reality for Florida’s Brightest Students

 

Denied at UF & FSU: The New Reality for Florida’s Brightest Students

Keber and Brayer’s stories aren’t outliers. Florida’s two premier state universities—UF and Florida State University (FSU)—have never been more popular or harder to get into. Meanwhile, the ripple effect of well-qualified students getting denied at these schools has enhanced the applicant pools at other state schools like USF and the University of Central Florida (UCF)—once considered commuter schools and “safety schools” for Florida’s top students.

FSU received more than 85,900 applications this year, an 8% increase over last year and a 182% increase compared to a decade ago. 

This year, FSU admitted 38% of in-state students and 19% of out-of-state applicants to the Class of 2029. The average SAT for this year’s freshman class at UF is 1432. The middle 50% of students admitted to FSU’s Class of 2029 had an average SAT score of 1395.  At UCF, the state’s largest university by enrollment, the middle 50% had an average SAT score of 1360.

Beth Partington is an independent college consultant in Pensacola and the owner of Next Level College Consulting. Having started advising students in 2015, Partington says she’s witnessed dramatic changes in admissions standards at Florida’s state schools. “It’s night and day compared to ten years ago,” she says. “When a student wants to get into UF and FSU, I’m more stressed because I know with (those schools), you have to meet the numbers. High performing students used to consider those schools safety schools, but they aren’t anymore.” 

Ten years ago, UF had an acceptance rate of 48% while FSU accepted 56%. Twenty-five years ago, the acceptance rate at UF was 63% and 54% at FSU. The share of out-of-state students at both universities has also risen in the last decade, from 8% to 15% at UF and 11% to 20% at FSU (these figures do not include international students). State law mandates that systemwide enrollment cannot exceed 10% for out-of-state students across Florida’s twelve state schools. But the less selective schools in the state have shares well below 10%, so UF and FSU can exceed that figure without violating state law. Why are so many top students in the state being shut out of Florida’s top state schools and what are parents doing to help their kids to get into the state’s two premier public universities?

 In its 2025 Best College rankings, Niche rated UF the 33rd best college in the country and FSU was  No. 51 on their list.

Members of Generation Z appear to appreciate the value of quality state schools and are apparently into balmy weather and the football school culture that thrives in the South. 

“It’s become one of those big fun Southern football schools that everyone wants to go to.” Indeed, it is—Niche also rates FSU the No. 2 party school in the nation. With both FSU and UF boasting first-year retention rates above 95%, it seems that most UF and FSU students are happy and are spreading the word about the good vibes on campus.

Without accounting for room and board, out-of-state tuition for the 2025-26 academic year costs $29,000 at UF and just under $19,000 at FSU. Compare those prices to the roughly $60,000 out-of-state tuition at the University of Virginia, $45,000 at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, $43,000 at the University of Texas–Austin, $61,000 at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, and $53,000 at the University of California-Berkeley. 

For example, FSU may offer a student admission to its main Tallahassee campus through its Seminole Pathways Program. Students accepted to the program are asked to complete their first fall semester of classes at nearby Tallahassee State College, FSU Panama City, or by studying abroad at one of the university’s international campuses. The students can then return to study at the main campus in the spring or for their sophomore year.

At FSU, the demographic makeup of the 2027 and 2028 classes were almost identical before and after the Supreme Court ruling: the percentage of Black students slightly increased from 6.0% to 6.4% while Asian students stayed consistent (4.6% to 4.7%).  The  Hispanic student enrollment rate just ticked up from 23.0% to 24.1%. UF hasn’t published demographic data on the Class of 2028 yet, but their 2027 class demographics were similar to FSU for Black and Hispanic students. However, the share of Asian students in the freshman class was considerably higher at 14.8%. (According to census data, 3.2% of Floridians identify as solely Asian, 16.9% identify as solely Black and 27.4% as solely Hispanic).