It began as a normal Monday in October. As the sun rose into the sky, coffee pots perked, toasters clicked and bacon sizzled on frying pans across the country. Yet on this morning, a glance at the sports page interrupted the usual sounds of breakfast.
Fathers choked on their scrambled eggs, mothers spat out their lattes and children everywhere cried into their cereal bowls as they struggled to comprehend the horror printed in their newspapers. For the first time since Dec. 6, 1982, neither the Florida State Seminoles nor the Miami (FL) Hurricanes were ranked in the Associated Press Top-25 college football poll.
Riots immediately broke out across the sunshine state. Senior-citizens turned over their golf carts and set them on fire. Fearing for their signature character's life, Disney officials helicoptered Mickey Mouse out of the Magic Kingdom. REM's ""It's the End of the World as We Know It"" could be heard from Tallahassee to Key West.
All right I'm lying, but with the way Seminole and Hurricane fans have been spoiled, anything could happen.
Since 1983, Florida State and Miami have combined for seven national championships and 29 seasons with 10 or more victories. The Seminoles have earned bowl bids in 24 straight seasons and posted a record of 17-6-1. The Hurricanes, meanwhile, have only mustered 21 bowl trips during that span tallying a mediocre 13-8 postseason mark.
The ‘Noles and ‘Canes have each had two Heisman Trophy winners. Quarterbacks Charlie Ward and Chris Weinke won in 1993 and 2000 for FSU while Hurricane quarterbacks Vinny Testaverde and Gino Torretta took home the hardware in 1986 and 1992.
Although only Testaverde became a household name in the National Football League, Weinke remains a backup for the Carolina Panthers, Ward played basketball for the New York Knicks and Torretta now owns a successful used-car dealership in downtown Tampa.
Actually, Torretta works for ""the institutional and high net worth marketing team of Gabelli Asset Management."" I'm sure his coaches are very proud.
Through their decades of dominance, the Seminoles and Hurricanes have given fans the closest thing they have to minor league football. Yes, I know there's NFL Europe, but seriously, I'd rather watch the ""E! True Hollywood Story"" on Flava-Flave than a game between the Rhine Fire and the Frankfurt Galaxy.
Forty-four former FSU stars and 43 ex-Miami standouts now play in the NFL.
The two rivals also have produced several stellar coaches. Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden has totaled 362 career victories, the most in Division I-A history.
Before he led the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl Championships and long before he gained fame as an analyst on Fox's NFL halftime show, Jimmy Johnson posted a record of 52-9 while coaching the Hurricanes. In 1987, his team went undefeated and won the national championship. All the while, his hair stayed perfectly motionless, just as it does today.
The success of coaches like Bowden and Johnson has always kept the standards high, perhaps, too high.
Consider the position of Miami head coach Larry Coker. Entering the 2006 season, Coker had compiled a record of 53-9. He took the Hurricanes to consecutive national championship games in his first two seasons as head coach, winning the BCS title game in 2001.
Despite these accomplishments, some in Miami called for his resignation after the Hurricanes 1-2 start this season. Fans in Tallahassee would no doubt have done the same to Bowden when FSU dropped to 3-2. Because of his age, however, Bowden is listed as a historical state treasure and cannot be harmed.
The AP rankings might look incomplete without Florida State or Miami in the Top 25. It might be difficult to understand how two teams that dominated college football for nearly a quarter of a century will have to struggle to get to a New Year's Day bowl game. It might seem strange to see the Wisconsin Badgers, the Missouri Tigers and even the traditionally pathetic Rutgers Scarlet Knights take spots away from the perennial powerhouses of Florida.
It might be the end of the college football world as we know it, but I feel fine.
To reach Ryan for comments or questions, email him at reszel@wisc.edu.
