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- The Florida–Florida State football rivalry is an American college football rivalry between the teams of the two oldest public universities of the U.S. state of Florida: the University of Florida (UF) Gators and Florida State University (FSU) Seminoles. Both universities participate in a range of intercollegiate sports, and for the last several years, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has sponsored a "Sunshine Showdown" promotion that tallies the total number of wins for each school in head-to-head sports competition. However, the annual football game between the Gators and Seminoles has consistently been the most intense and notable competition between the in-state rivals. FSU and UF first met on the gridiron in 1958 and have played every year since except in 2020, when scheduling modifications due to the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted what was the fourth longest continuous series in college football. The contest has usually been played late in the season and was scheduled on the Saturday after Thanksgiving from 1981 until 2022, when it was moved to the Friday after Thanksgiving. The rivals have also clashed twice in New Orleans in the Sugar Bowl, marking the only occasions in which they've met anywhere besides their on-campus stadiums. Florida dominated the series until Bobby Bowden became FSU's coach in 1976, after which the rivalry became much more competitive. The intensity level rose to its highest point in the 1990s, when the Gators under Steve Spurrier and the Seminoles under Bowden each came into their contest with top ten rankings for every meeting from 1990 until 2001, adding national championship implications to an already heated in-state rivalry. The winner of the game would go on to compete for a national championship in six of those seasons (1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000). While both programs have been less consistently successful in more recent years, the rivalry carries in-state bragging rights and is still hotly contested. Florida leads the overall series 37–27–2, FSU leads 25–22–1 since Bowden's first year in 1976, and the rivals have split the past twenty meetings with ten wins apiece. (en)
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