Florida State Seminoles Football - Overview

Overview

The Florida State University joined the Atlantic Coast Conference in July 1991, and it is one of the twelve current members of the ACC. Florida State is considered one of the teams that brought the conference to its pinnacle becoming the overall most successful program in the ACC. Since the ACC expanded from nine to twelve universities in 2005, and instituted divisional play in football, the Florida State Seminoles football team has competed in the ACC Atlantic Division.

Florida State plays an eight-game ACC football schedule. Five of these contests pit the Seminoles against the other members of the ACC Atlantic Division: Boston College, Clemson, Maryland, North Carolina State and Wake Forest. The conference schedule is filled out with an annual game against Miami and two additional foes from the ACC Coastal Division on a rotating basis between the other teams in the conference: Duke, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Virginia and Virginia Tech. Throughout a rotation schedule, Florida State plays each coastal division team at least twice every six years with possible meetings in the championship game in between regular season meetings. Florida State will also begin to play Syracuse as an Atlantic division partner and Pittsburgh as a Coastal division partner when they join the conference in the coming seasons.

Key conference rivalries include the inter-divisional Florida State-Miami rivalry game with their permanent ACC Coastal Division foe, Miami, the Florida State–Clemson rivalry game which usually carries division implications, and the Florida State-Virginia game which is played on a rotating basis for the Jefferson-Eppes trophy (this game was played on an annual basis until the ACC divided and the teams were placed in separate divisions).

In addition to the conference foes, the Seminoles face in-state rival Florida from the SEC at the end of the regular season. The two teams' emergence as perennial football powers in the 1980s and 1990s helped build the Florida–Florida State rivalry into a game that has often held national title implications. Florida State remains the only team in the state of Florida to play both powers, Florida and Miami, meaning they are the only team in contention for the Florida Cup on a yearly basis.

The remaining dates on Florida State's regular season schedule are filled with various non-conference opponents that vary from year to year.