Florida Football: 10 greatest Florida State rivalry games, Part 1

6. 2004: Florida 20, Florida State 13

In January 2002, New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator Ron Zook was given the unenviable task of replacing the legendary Steve Spurrier as Florida’s head coach. His time in Gainesville was doomed from the start, as many fans accused the university of “settling” for the former college and pro assistant after failing to land more lucrative candidates such as Bob Stoops and the aforementioned Mike Shanahan.

Zook’s 2002 team won eight games and went to a bowl. That’s just fine for a lot of schools. Not for a Florida fanbase who had grown accustomed to winning SEC titles and going to major bowls with regularity. When he repeated the eight-win feat in 2003, many Florida backers wanted him gone.

Then 2004 saw the Gators endure an embarrassing loss to a Mississippi State squad they should have beaten with ease and Jeremy Foley had seen enough of the Zook era. He was informed of his termination the following week but was allowed to coach the remainder of the regular season. The Gators lost to Georgia but had no trouble with Vanderbilt and South Carolina.

Meanwhile, Bobby Bowden had his Seminoles ranked 10th, but earlier that season had lost to a Maryland team that wound up with a losing record. It was a curious upset.

The 2004 Florida vs. Florida State game was not expected to be a high-stakes game. Sure, there would be some added motivation for the Gators to try to win one for their embattled, outgoing coach, but few thought that the Gators would actually beat their top-10 ranked arch rival on their home turf.

The old adage “that’s why they play the game” certainly comes to mind when revisiting this game.

Quarterback Chris Leak had to start the Gators’ opening drive from his own 3-yard line, but led Florida 97 yards down the field, capping the series with a 13-yard touchdown pass to Chad Jackson. That was the only score for either team in the first quarter.

Florida added a Matt Leach field goal in the second, and led 10-3 at the break. Neither team put anything further on the scoreboard in the third quarter, but Florida brought its lead to 10 early in the fourth when Leach put another field goal through the uprights to make it 13-3 Gators.

Gator fans got nervous when Florida State quarterback Chris Rix engineered an 80-yard drive that ended in a touchdown pass to Chauncey Stovall to cut the Florida lead to a field goal. Florida was not shaken and Leak calmly brought his Gators down the field on a similar 80-yard drive, capped with a Ciatrick Faison touchdown run.

Florida State’s Xavier Bettia added a field goal to cut the UF lead to 20-13, but with only 22 seconds to play, it would prove to be academic. Zook was able to go out a winner.

The end of Zook’s tenure was bittersweet. He knew that if he had put together the same record at a program like Kentucky or Duke, he would have had nothing to worry about. However, Outback Bowls and three straight losses to Tennessee are not acceptable to a program like that of Florida.

Zook would move on to Illinois and struggled to put anything together at a school where recruiting top talent is a much more difficult task. There were some bright spots, like a 2007 season that saw “the Zook” take his Illini to their first Rose Bowl since the days of Dick Butkus. After the end of his time in Champaign, he had a litany of college and pro coaching stints.

The Gators played in the 2004 Peach Bowl under interim coach Charlie Strong. Urban Meyer would take over in Gainesville the following year and the rest is history. Florida State would go on to defeat West Virginia in the Gator Bowl, capping a 9-3 campaign in 2004.

Coming up next

In the next part of this series, we’ll take a look at the top five Florida vs. Florida State matchups. From the 1996 No. 1 vs. No. 2 battle to the 1995 Sugar Bowl, the 1990s were the golden age of this rivalry. Steve Spurrier vs. Bobby Bowden clashes in the 20th century’s last decade caused the series to take the place of Oklahoma vs. Nebraska as college football’s most important rivalry.

We’ll relive some of those clashes in the next part of this series.