For 13 straight meetings over an 11-year period, it was as compelling a high-profile rivalry as any other in college football history.
Yes, there was a time a generation ago when Florida-Florida State went on a run of greatness that made their annual showdown appointment television.
Unlike the last decade, where one or both programs have mostly been nationally irrelevant, the Gators and Seminoles from 1990-2000 held an esteemed place in the college football landscape.
How do you beat two iconic head coaches, Florida's Steve Spurrier and Florida State's Bobby Bowden, squaring off for more than a decade (1990-2000) when both their programs were ranked in the top 10 for every game?
In the previous 32 UF-FSU meetings, that had never happened. Since Spurrier departed Gainesville in 2001, it has occurred only once (2012). The teams meet Saturday night at Florida Field in a game with minimal hype as the Gators are 17-point favorites over unranked FSU.
The game now has become almost a footnote to the prominent spotlight it once occupied. To further illustrate how special the Spurrier-Bowden matchups were, contemplate this: since the advent of the Associated Press poll in 1936, no college football rivalry featured a matchup of top-10 teams for a longer stretch than Florida-Florida State.
"That's some pretty good rankings right there," said Spurrier. "We knew we had to beat those guys. I think they had won three in a row before we got there (in 1990). The FSU game was for in-state bragging rights, recruiting, positioning yourself if you're in the national championship hunt.
"It was always a big game. I tell everybody we won the one that counted for everything. We had a little extra juice for that one."
That would be the 1997 Sugar Bowl, where the No. 3-ranked Gators avenged a 24-21 loss to FSU five weeks earlier � a game in which Spurrier publicly griped about the Seminoles' late hits on quarterback Danny Wuerffel � with a 52-20 thumping to claim its first national championship.
To this day, it still helps Spurrier ease the sting from FSU and Bowden holding an 8-5-1 edge on him in their meetings.
?(Bowden) has had an amazing record, no question," said Spurrier. "He was the best in the country for 14 years. I think he was sort of an unlucky coach with all the wide rights against Miami.
"I've said many times if FSU hadn't scheduled Miami and us, there's no telling how many national championships they would have had. We're about the only teams that beat them."
The UF-FSU battles were epic. From No. 1 FSU's 33-21 win in Gainesville during their first national championship season in 1993, to the "Choke at Doak" when the Seminoles rallied from a 31-3 deficit to tie the Gators 31-31 the following year, to UF knocking off No. 2-ranked FSU 32-29 in 1997 when Spurrier used the bizarre strategy of alternating quarterbacks Doug Johnson and Noah Brindise on every play, the glory days of the UF-FSU rivalry had a little bit of everything.
Now? Well, not so much. The Gators, who bottomed out under previous coaches Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain, have fought their way back to respectability the past two years under Dan Mullen. But FSU's program has been hovering around .500 the last three seasons and fired head coach Willie Taggart nearly four weeks ago.
?(The rivalry) loses a little bit when the teams aren't quite as good," Spurrier said. "That would happen at a lot of places. To think Florida State and Miami are not even ranked now is odd, but times change. Fortunately, we look like we're the best (in the state) right now and we need to stay there."
During one spectacular run, Florida and Florida State were among the best at the same time. In six of those 13 meetings from 1990-2000, both were among the nation's top-five teams, yet no worse than top-10.
That kind of powerhouse matchup for that long a stretch is unprecedented. Nebraska-Oklahoma (1971-80) was the only other rivalry that pulled that off for an entire decade, but even the Cornhuskers and Sooners met as top-10 programs only 13 times in their whole history. Even the compelling Miami-FSU series that decided so many national championships never had more than a seven-year run (1987-93) where both held top-10 rankings.
Other historic rivalries such as Michigan-Ohio State, especially during the Bo Schembechler-Woody Hayes era, never had anything close to the top-10 runs simultaneously like Spurrier and Bowden. Neither at any point did Notre Dame-Southern Cal, Texas-Oklahoma, Alabama-LSU, Alabama-Auburn or Army-Notre Dame during the World War II era.
And consider this: Florida and Georgia, who have played against each other a lot longer than UF-FSU, have only been ranked in the top-10 at the same time of their matchup five times. It puts in perspective how special the Gators-Seminoles meetings were during the Spurrier-Bowden years.
Given what's happened to the UF-FSU rivalry the last two decades, it may be a while before those glory days are resurrected. Since Spurrier departed after the 2001 season, only once have these in-state rivals both held a top-10 ranking for their late November showdown, that coming in 2012 when the Gators were No. 6 and the Seminoles No. 10.
To further demonstrate how much this rivalry has lost its luster, this year's matchup between No. 8 Florida and unranked FSU will be the seventh time in the last decade that one or both programs are unranked at game time.
For a dozen seasons of being on opposite sidelines, Spurrier vs. Bowden was about the most entertaining coaching matchup in college football this side of Woody and Bo.
It was the Camelot period of the Florida-Florida State rivalry, a planet-aligning circumstance when the school's greatest coaches were at their absolute best. Sadly, it may never be duplicated again.
