Best FSU Football bowl game for December 31st: 2010 Chick-Fil-A

FSU football isn’t playing in a bowl game this season, so we’re taking a look back at some of the best postseason games for the Seminoles by date.

Each and every single New Years Eve, billions of people across the world spend the final moments of each year enjoying time together and planning for what the future may hold. For the FSU football team, four of those days in the program’s history have been spent doing a lot less reflecting and a lot more working on trying to win a bowl game.

What started the first time to finish off the 1986 season has taken place once more in Nashville and twice in the city of Atlanta – with the first one of those game in the Peach State being the culmination of an up and down start to the first season for the latest coach to lead the Seminoles.

For the Noles, it was also a chance to beat an old nemesis who had returned to the SEC seasons before while also doing something that had never taken place before for a program that started playing just over six decades before.

Here’s a look at the best FSU football bowl game the program has played on December 31st.

2010 Chick-Fil-A Bowl – Florida State 26 South Carolina

In the first year for the Seminoles under a coach who shall remain nameless at this time, the ups and downs for the Noles included beating Miami and Florida in the same season for the first time since 1999 while also making it back to the ACC title game – where they lost convincingly to Virginia Tech after being blow out by Oklahoma earlier in the season.

On a Friday night inside the old Georgia Dome, the Seminoles faced a Gamecocks team coached by Steve Spurrier – who annoyed FSU football when he played and led the Florida Gators but still had a losing record all time against the Noles.

The game started with Dustin Hopkins kicking two first half field goals and Chris Thompson going in from 27 yards out as the Seminoles led by 10 at the half. As the second half started and extended into the fourth quarter, the Gamecocks traded touchdowns for two Hopkins kicks and the lead was all of a sudden down to two.

Fearing their first bowl loss since the 2007 season, FSU football marched down field led by E.J. Manuel – who came in the game in the second quarter for an injured Christian Ponder – and cemented the game with a touchdown pass to Taiwan Easterling and the Seminoles added what used to be called the Peach Bowl to their list of conquered post season games.

With the Seminoles offense getting just 308 yards in the game – with Thompson being named MVP after getting over half those yards himself – the defense stepped up and forced five turnovers on the day that included three interceptions of South Carolina quarterback and Tampa native Stephen Garcia.

The win not only gave FSU football their first 10 win season since 2003 and continued Spurrier’s losing record against the Noles, but it also marked the first time the Seminoles won a bowl game in the first season of a head coach’s tenure and started a four year streak of winning bowl games.