Rivalry

I love the Florida State-Florida football game. It's one of the great rivalries in college sports—a game in which emotions and intangibles can wreak havoc with rankings, records and statistical trends. Even in a year with a clear favorite and underdog—one team mowing down every opponent, the other just trying to avoid another embarrassing loss or season-ending injury—shocking things can happen.

Like all great rivalries, FSU-Florida can bring out some pretty uncool behavior, not just among players and coaches, but also among the fans. I try to keep that behavior in perspective. I suspect every team in the country has a fringe group of obnoxious fans who get more attention, headlines and YouTube views than the highly likable ones who far outnumber them. I won't pretend that Tallahassee is completely devoid of garnet-and-gold-clad idiots, nor will I completely write off any other school's fans because of the few drunken halfwits I've met along the way.

(I can neither confirm nor deny that I may or may not once have stood at a latrine in a men’s room at Campbell Stadium and peed on one of the many rubber alligators placed there specifically to be peed on. Yeah. It’s that intense.)

I love the Seminoles, and I try to be classy about it. If I'm insufferable, I hope it's only because maybe I clogged your Facebook feed with tipsy inanities during FSU games, or I accidentally knocked your beer out of your hand when I was chopping—not because I say douchey things about you, your team or your school.

Especially if your school is that one in Gainesville. Because I dearly love a whole bunch of people who cheer for the Florida Gators—former band students from my teaching days in Orlando, or perhaps old friends who are Gator alumni, or friends whose kids went to the Dark Side and attended U of F.

Most especially if you are my sister Karen, who for the past year-and-a-half has had the cool job of telling the world about the medical team at UF Health Shands Hospital. Karen got to know those doctors when they started looking after her younger son William, who was born with a heart defect and has undergone open-heart surgery twice in his nine years. But Karen grew up in a Seminole household, and she still cheers for FSU as well—not least of all because former Nole fullback Lonnie Pryor has been a hero of William’s ever since they hung out together at the FSU Dance Marathon last March. Pryor also came to cheer for William when he played his first post-surgery lacrosse game later that spring.

It's hard for me to hate on a person's school—even in that "not really" sense of a rivalry—when I'm that connected with the person. 

Football is just football. 

I do find some rivalry things to be quite fun, and funny. Like the gif going around this past week of the two Gator offensive linemen blocking each other on a play in their loss to Georgia Southern last weekend. I laugh because it's Football 101, and because it's the Gators. C'mon, man, that's funny.

And yes, I'll suck it up should the tables turn, as they tend to do. 

True Seminole fans acknowledge the overall series record: 34 UF wins, 21 FSU wins, 2 ties (including one game we all know should've been a Nole win), and they remember those bitter first two decades: utter Gator domination, to the tune of 15-2-1. 

And true Gator fans will admit the tune changed when Bobby Bowden arrived at FSU in 1976: In the last 39 games, both teams have 19 wins—plus that one game that we all know was really a Nole win. (Remember that t-shirt? "Hey, Gators—nice tie!") 

That's why it's a rivalry.

So yeah. I will cheer for my beloved Seminoles, and I'll try not to cheer against the hated Gators.

Still, I can’t promise I won’t laugh my ass off if those two blue-and-orange-clad teammates decide to block each other again.


Go Noles! Gig them Gators! 

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