FSU Football: Struggles with Wake Forest helped build current Noles

FSU football hasn’t had a lot of trouble with the Demon Deacons over their history – but a six year stretch helped to bring them back down to earth.

This coming Saturday, FSU football will hit the road for their first true “away” game of the season – taking on a familiar ACC foe in the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, one of just three conference teams the Seminoles have played every single season since joining the ACC in 1992 (as the Miami Hurricanes didn’t join until the 2004 season).

For much of that time, the Noles have had their way with the men from Winston-Salem as they won the first 14 conference meetings – with many of them not being close. In fact, Wake Forest has met Florida State the third most times of any conference foe, behind Miami and N.C. State, with the Seminoles winning 80 percent of the games.

However, it was a six game stretch toward the end of the last decade and start of the current one that helped shape what the current FSU football program has become.

From 2006 to 2011, the Demon Deacons won four of those six meetings which included two close losses for the Seminoles in North Carolina and two home losses by a combined score of 42-3 – including the first shutout loss by the FSU football program at home in over 30 seasons when they lost 30-0 in 2006.

During what has commonly been called the “lost decade” of Florida State, the Seminoles had a trend of losing games they should have won and winning games they didn’t have a chance in. Wins over Notre Dame and Alabama were tampered by three straight losses to a Wake Forest team that, while better than they once were, had no business dominating the Noles.

While the Seminoles won their 2010 game with Wake Forest in Jimbo Fisher’s first season, the 2011 game was another disappointment when the Demon Deacons won 35-30 for the Noles third straight loss (as it turns out, just the second time the Seminoles have had a losing record in a season under Fisher with the other time being the 0-1 record following the loss to Alabama).

After that loss, FSU football rattled off one of the best records in program history by winning 52 of their next 55 games during a streak that included three ACC crowns, a national title and three bowl wins. Finally, the Seminoles had seemed to turn around their ways and finally played up to the potential everyone knew they could.

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The last two seasons, however, Wake Forest has given the Seminoles everything they got with FSU football having to fight for the win each time – something Fisher would be well advised to remind players of to avoid a relapse against the Demon Deacons.