FSU Football Should Never Forget Wake Forest Shutout of 2006

When FSU football takes the field Saturday at home against Wake Forest, they should never forget getting shutout by the Demon Deacons one decade before.

Since the 1960 season, FSU football has only been shutout at home seven times – and just one of those has happened since the 1974 season began. It was 10 years ago, on Veterans Day 2006, when the Seminoles suffered maybe one of the most embarrassing losses in program history.

For the first nearly decade and a half of ACC play, the Seminoles’ yearly game against Wake Forest was nothing more than going through the motions. In the first 14 seasons as conference foes, it wasn’t even close and FSU had nothing really to worry about.

Then came the 2006 season…

When the Demon Deacons came down to Tallahassee on that November evening, it was the men from Winston-Salem who were ranked in the top 20 nationally and had an 8-1 record and the lead in the ACC Atlantic Division. It was the ‘Noles who limped in with a 5-4 record and were desperate to try and avoid the first losing season since Bobby Bowden’s first year in 1976.

When the game was over, Wake Forest puffed their chest after the 30-0 victory over FSU football. The Seminoles combined for 167 yards of total offense on the night (nearly doubled up by Wake’s 312), not helped at all by Xavier Lee and Drew Weatherford combining for four interceptions on the night – the last one being returned for the final score of the game.

It was the turning point for both programs as the Seminoles would continue to struggle for much of the next three seasons as well, no where close to what they once where and eventually leading to Bowden’s departure after the 2009 campaign.

For Wake Forest, it was the first of three straight wins over the team that used to schedule them multiple times for homecoming (one of just two teams to do that to FSU football as members of the ACC).

The reason why the Seminoles – and the fan base – need to remember what took place a decade ago is because Wake Forest enters this week’s battle with the ‘Noles at 5-1…their best record through six games since that 2006 campaign. Add into that the up and down play of the ‘Noles and their defense this season and you can’t take the Deacs for granted.

Are the 2016 Seminoles better than the 2016 Seminoles? Yes, of course. Have stranger things happen in football? Of course…just look at a warm November night in Tallahassee just 10 years ago.