Florida State Seminoles Look To Close Out BCS Back On Top Of College Football

It’s been more than a decade since the Florida State Seminoles football team has been in the national title conversation, and tonight, in the swan song of the Bowl Championship Series, the Seminoles are hoping to once more grab that championship ring at the expense of old rivals, the Auburn Tigers.

Florida State’s last national championship came during the height of the Bobby Bowden years. The Seminoles appeared in the first three BCS National Championship games, the only team to appear in three consecutive games. Florida State lost the inaugural game to the Tennessee Volunteers in the 1999 Fiesta Bowl before taking home the title in the 2000 Sugar Bowl. Their last appearance was the 2001 Orange Bowl, a low-scoring 13-2 loss to the Oklahoma Sooners.

Fun fact: with this year’s Rose Bowl, the Seminoles will become the only team to appear in all four BCS Bowls in championship games. But, you can be sure newly re-signed Florida State head coach Jimbo Fisher is focused on the win over the trivia.

Of course, for Fisher, winning the future is all about knowing the past.

While the Seminoles haven’t played Auburn in more than two decades according to ESPN, the Florida State coach keeps “a running record of all the guys we’ve played against and books on all the guys we’ve ever played against for the last 10, 15, years.”

Wow.

“You have a list of those things, and we keep a file on everybody, offense, defense. We’ve done it for years and you file them away,” Fisher said, “And when you play them again, you pull them out and see how they change…”

“I feel very confident we’re ready,” Fisher said. “I think we’ve practiced extremely well and I like our mindset and our attitude right now.”

Florida State has a ton of things going for them in tonight’s game. Having a Heisman-winning quarterback in Jameis Winston always helps. And he’s not worried about the Heisman Curse either.

“One thing I can tell you about history, it’s in the past. I’m not worried about what history has said,” Florida State’s freshman QB told the Orlando Sentinel. “I’m worried about what’s happening today, what’s happening on Monday and what I have to do to prepare myself to play well in this game.”

Will the Florida State Seminoles win the national championship? What do you think of the Seminoles’ future with Winston? Is Florida State back on top?